


reputation

by ginnyweasleys



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Harry Potter Next Generation, Multi, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-05-27 16:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15028361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginnyweasleys/pseuds/ginnyweasleys
Summary: Being the children of Harry Potter was never going to be an easy task, but Albus thought the media attention and constant stress of disappointing their parents might get more bearable after Hogwarts.No such luck--his brother's got a girl pregnant, his sister won't stop taking selfies, he might still be in love with Scorpius Malfoy which is inconvenient since he's sleeping with Al's cousin, and Teddy and Victoire broke up, so honestly, what hope is there for true love for the rest of them?





	1. loved and left haunted

**Author's Note:**

> a fic i always wanted to write and never properly got around to: the life and times of albus severus potter, my absolute favorite slytherin asshole. be warned i've never finished a multichapter in my life but since this will mostly be family drama and romance i'm hoping i can keep going with it. a few notes on canon before we start:
> 
> cursed child is not canon, even though i also have both al and scorpius in slytherin. but i did it before jkr, so there.  
> this takes place when al is a year out of hogwarts, so 2025-ish, lily is just starting her seventh year.  
> dean thomas married daphne greengrass, making him scorpius' uncle; daphne and astoria also have an older brother who has two kids, one of whom is mentioned in this chapter.  
> for some reason i write james and al with a two-year age difference, and i also write dominique and louis switched in age order. no explanation, that's just how it is in my mind so you're gonna have to deal with it.  
> al is (openly) gay.  
> other cousins and friends will show up later so i'll add their tags when they do.
> 
> huge shoutout to my dearest friends from next-gen fanatics for always encouraging me in writing; i've taken a lot of ideas from our roleplay from last summer and they are one hundred percent to thank for it. especially jane who lets me bounce ideas off her like no one else. check out our joint next-gen blog @nextgensquad on tumblr where you can see our ocs and ships and other graphics! my main is @astoriamalfoys and i'd love to talk with you about next-gen as well.
> 
> i'm also @lydiamaartin on pinterest where you can find the board for this story (it's called REPUTATION over there as well.) and of course an eternal thank you to taylor swift for the song lyrics.

Albus often thinks that if he had been born into another family, even into another _branch_ of his family, he might have stood a halfway decent shot at coming out sane.

Unluckily for him, he hadn’t been, so when his big brother James crashes through the door of his flat, clutching a beer bottle like it’s his baby, Al only manages to heave a long, deep sigh before switching on the part of his brain best-equipped to deal with James Sirius Potter and heading out to greet him.

“Yo, Al,” says James upon seeing him, his eyes hazy with alcohol and his feet swaying. “You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked.”

At least he’s not yet at the slurring stage. Although James can handle his alcohol pretty well, even though he’s short, he’s got muscles and a long history of drinking, so it takes a lot for him to get super drunk. Al would probably classify him as half-drunk at the moment. He’s got a black eye blooming which means he’s probably just been in a fight.

“I don’t,” Al answers and takes his brother’s arm, hauling him over to the couch in their living room. It’s more of a joint living room and study, used mostly by him since god knows what Scorpius does at work but it clearly doesn’t require an office at home. “You just know the password.”

“Oh, yeah.” James’ face clears and he laughs, a boyish sound that brings Al sharply back to the days of running around the Burrow and James making fun of his attempts to ride a toy broomstick. “You should really change it. Everyone knows Mum’s birthday.”

“But they don’t know that I use it,” Al reminds him, gently but firmly pressing on James’ shoulders until he collapses onto the couch, his legs folding gracelessly beneath him. “Everyone would think it’s Dad’s birthday instead.”

James’ expression darkens and Al winces at himself for even mentioning his father. He really needs to keep a list called ‘taboo subjects for James in a Mood’ somewhere around the flat.

“Whatever.” The laughter has faded and now James slumps, disgruntled and sullen, into the couch, curling around his bottle of beer like it’s some sort of treasure and not worth five sickles at the grocery store. “Where’s Scorpion?”

“Scorpius,” Al corrects patiently. He pries the bottle from James’ hand after a bit of a struggle and tosses it quickly into the garbage bin. “He’s out.”

James blinks up at him, divested of his only accessory. “With Rosie?”

Al is abruptly too tired for this. “What are you doing here, James?”

“Came to see my little brother.” James tries to punch him on the shoulder but since Al is standing and he isn’t, he only reaches his forearm. “I’m allowed to do that, right? You haven’t taken out a restraining order?”

“As if.” What Al doesn’t say, as he gingerly lowers himself down next to his brother, perfectly out of vomiting range, is that he could no sooner take out a restraining order against James than cut off one of his own limbs. “Who’d you fight this time?”

James pretends to look offended and puts up a rather good face for someone who’s probably had, by Al’s calculations, at least six bottles of beers by now. He loses it quickly though and adopts his favorite I-just-got-away-with-something grin. “Matthew Davies. Guy’s a punk, and he was going around saying he’d slept with Lily, so I decked him.”

Al raises an eyebrow. “Did he?”

James shrugs, careless. “Who cares? Guys only say that shit around me to rile me up, you know that. It’s not like Lily’ll ever tell the truth.”

What a perfectly eloquent answer. Al lowers his estimation down to five bottles of beer.

“Maybe,” suggests Al carefully, “you shouldn’t let them rile you up so much.”

James looks at him in earnest confusion. Like this, with his dark hair all spiked up and messy, and hazel eyes wide and bright, he almost looks like a normal person, if you can ignore the black eye and the tattoo of a dragon spitting fireballs in slow motion around his neck or the fact that his left knuckle is purpling as they speak.

“Why would I do that?” he demands, as if this is an outrageous expectation.

“So you get hurt less?” Al suggests, reaching out to press two fingers to the bottom of James’ eye. Immediately, James flinches away with a muttered, “ _Fuck_.” Al looks at him with what he knows is their mother’s preferred what-did-I- _just_ -say face.

“Nah.” James flexes his arm, clenching and unclenching his bruised fist. “It’s fun, y’know. They all think they can take me, but they can’t. Davies is a fucking pussy.”

“Don’t say that,” Al says automatically. He’s listened to too many of Rose’s sermons on the importance of watching what language we use to let that slide.

James snorts. “Whatever. It was one of his friends who got me, anyway, not him. He quailed as soon as I landed one.”

“And I’m sure this will be all over Phoenyx as soon as I open it up, right?” Al says dryly. Truthfully, he hates the app and takes great care not to open it up if he can help it; he honestly prefers its muggle equivalent Twitter to get his world news. At least Twitter doesn’t constantly have moments on what outrageous outfits his little sister is wearing to parties or who his brother has beaten up or how many affairs his father has had (zero, at Al’s last count, but five at Phoenyx’s.)

“Everything we do ends up on Phoenyx,” James says dismissively. “Hey, do you have any vodka?”

“No,” Al lies. They do, in fact, have a good amount of alcohol, since Scorpius is rich and likes a well-stocked liquor cabinet, but the last thing his brother needs is more to drink. “I’ll get you some water.”

“You’re the most boring brother in the world!” James calls as Al heads into their kitchen. But he’s laughing, so Al knows he doesn’t really mean it. “God, what is with you and your muggle shit? Is this an actual television?”

“Don’t touch it,” Al says over his shoulder, rummaging around in their fridge for their stash of Sober-Me-Up potions. “I worked hard to fix that up.”

“You’re so weird.” James leans over the back of the couch to watch him. He’s looking more and more sleepy the longer the night drags on, so Al adds a quick sleeping charm to the water-potion mixture he’s creating. “Even weirder than Lily, and she’s _weird_.”

“She is pretty weird,” Al agrees. He comes back through the archway that separates their kitchen from their living room and offers the concoction to James. “Drink all of it and maybe you’ll avoid a hangover tomorrow.”

“But that’s the whole fun of drinking,” says James. He downs the whole glass anyway then makes a face. “Merlin, that’s _gross_. I thought you and your freaky little Slytherin society were supposed to be good at making potions?”

“Fuck off,” Al replies on instinct. James flashes that unbearably childish grin at him and Al exhales a sigh which turns into a laugh halfway. “You’re clearly not drunk enough if you’re making fun of me.”

“It’s my job.” James’ eyelids are lowering, so the sleeping charm is taking effect. “’M your big brother… s’what I do…”

Al Summons a blanket from the coat closet just as James nods off and carefully arranges his brother in the most comfortable position on their couch. Since it’s a used couch, no position is really that comfortable, but James is much shorter than him—something he hates to be reminded of—so he manages to fit all his limbs on there before covering him up with the blanket.

Scorpius is going to kill him for letting James crash at their flat again, but Al is prepared to weather the snarky comments if it means James can get a decent’s night sleep instead of spending it all out in night clubs and bars, picking fights with anyone that moves. Especially if it means James won’t end up in a strange girl’s bedroom at the end of the night and turn into Phoenyx’s top-trending news in a matter of minutes when she sells the story to buy herself a new house or whatever.

That’s happened three times, which is three times too many, in Al’s humble opinion, so he closes the lights of the living room and heads up to his bedroom to deal with whatever storm Scorpius brings him tomorrow after a full night’s rest.

.

.

.

Scorpius is glaring at him when he wakes up.

Al sighs and draws the blankets up to his face. “Leave me alone.”

Scorpius snags the blankets and pulls them down. “You let your _brother_ crash on _my_ couch.”

“Excuse me,” says Al, offended. “It’s _our_ couch. I picked it out.”

“I paid for it,” Scorpius retorts. “Whatever, that’s not the point.”

“What is the point?” Al asks wearily.

“The _point_ is that he’s eaten all my favorite cereal. And I think he’s drunk. Again.”

This is concerning enough to wake Al up completely. “I swear I locked our liquor cabinet.”

“Yeah, he knows my passwords, too,” Scorpius says, nose wrinkling in a very pureblood-esque disgruntled face. “Can you go deal with him, _please_? I’m in no mood.”

“You’re never in a mood for James,” Al reminds him, already pulling his covers off and getting out of bed. James day-drinking is a notable phenomenon, not because it doesn’t usually happen, but because it never happens without a reason.

Scorpius shrugs then tosses himself down into his own bed, across the room from Al’s, with an arm across his eyes to shelter them from the sunlight streaming through their window. “He hates me. I hate him. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

“Don’t think that’s what symbiotic means.” Al grabs his pants and tries not to look at the lean, graceful line of Scorpius draped over his silver bed coverings. He’s wearing last night’s clothes, but since it was _Scorpius_ , those clothes are a black silk shirt and ironed jeans and the buttons of his shirt are popped just enough to expose the angles of his collarbone—and the pink hickeys on his throat.

Al turns away, buckling up his own—very much non-ironed—jeans. “Had a fun time with Rose?”

He thinks he does a good job of keeping his voice casual, but Scorpius pulls his arm away and sits up. “I can _feel_ the judgment, Al.”

“Wasn’t trying to judge,” Al says, even though he very much was. “What is this, the fifth time you guys have gotten back together?”

Scorpius pulls a face at him, his lips curving downwards. “You don’t need to say it like that.”

“Oh, sorry.” Pointedly, Al pulls out his phone and opens up Phoenyx. “Would you prefer I say ‘Back at it again! Malfoy heir and Granger-Weasley princess spotted giggling in Little Italy! Are these star-crossed lovers finally back together?’”

He says all this in a completely deadpan voice, watching Scorpius’ eyes glaze over with every word. At the end of it, he stares mutely at Scorpius until his best friend finally cracks and bursts into laughter.

“God,” Scorpius gasps. “Are they still calling her ‘Granger-Weasley princess?’ That is _so_ five years ago. She’s gonna lose it.”

Al shakes his head. “You know Rose refuses to read this shit.”

“Yeah.” Scorpius sighs, not a little dreamily, and drops back down onto his bed. “She’s smart like that.”

Al stuffs his phone into his pockets, makes sure his wand is tucked into his sleeve, in case James is _really_ in a bad mood, and tosses his pillow at Scorpius before heads for the door. “Just don’t screw it up again. I am _not_ mediating for you two one more fucking time, Scor.”

“Whatever!” Scorpius calls after him. “It wasn’t my fault anyway, it was hers!”

Al flips him off and slams the bedroom door shut as he leaves. In the next instant, he realizes this was a bad idea because it immediately alerts James to his presence.

Fortunately—or not, depending on how you looked at it—James didn’t seem like he was in the mood for a fight, for _once_. Instead, he was sitting at a stool on their kitchen counter, drinking one of Scorpius’ margarita mixes— _gross_. Al makes a face but crosses over to sit next to him anyway. His brother looks positively despondent.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says, knocking a knuckle on James’ head to wake him up. James turns a baleful glare on him. “What’s the matter with you? Still hungover?”

James only grunts and doesn’t answer, curling further around his shitty pineapple-and-tequila margarita as if he’s a dragon hoarding his gold. Al catalogues this in his mind’s list of ‘James’ moods’ as ‘reasonably bad, but could be worse.’

“Alright,” says Al with a shrug. “Don’t talk about it then. Want some real breakfast?”

The best way to deal with James’ mood swings is to pretend they’re not happening, unless it’s one of those mood swings where he’s about to blow up. This doesn’t look like one of those, though, so Al sets about making pancakes until his brother is ready to talk about whatever’s got him like this.

Unfortunately, Scorpius saves them both the trouble and bounds in—freshly showered and smelling like his stupidly expensive cologne, of _course_ —to exacerbate the drama and pour salt in James’ wounds, as he’s wont to do.

“Is it true you knocked up Abby Longbottom?”

Al freezes in the middle of flipping pancakes. When he turns around, James is swiveling to stare at Scorpius with the most dirty, mutinous look he’s ever given anyone—which, with James, is saying a lot.

“Hey.” Scorpius puts his hands up. “Don’t shoot the messenger. It was on The Owlery.”

Al groans before he can help himself. “Scor, that shit is the lowest of the low of gossip mags, why do you even _go_ on there—”

“But it was confirmed by The Legacy,” Scorpius continues blithely, and Al snaps his mouth shut. The Legacy is a much more elite and well-renowned paper; his cousin Molly works there and they would never publish a story if it was only a rumor. “And then The Prophet…”

Scorpius trails off when he notices that James still looks like he’s about to blast Scorpius’ head off. To be honest, Al kind of wants to see it at this point. His brother and his best friend have hated each other for so long, Lily has a running bet going on what will finally get them both to snap.

But he’s James’ brother and Scorpius’ best friend, so he has to do damage control. “Hey, Scor?” He waits till Scorpius is looking at him before he says, meaningfully, “Fuck off, would you?”

“This is my house,” Scorpius protests, but steps backwards when Al shoots him his most dangerous Slytherin look. He never uses that against Scorpius, only against more hapless Gryffindors, so it does the trick. “Alright, alright. I’ve got a date anyway.”

“Is it Rose?” Al can’t help but ask. Scorpius winks at him, which could go either way, and bounces off, uncaring of the storm cloud he’s left in his kitchen for Al to deal with.

Al slides his pancakes onto a plate, tops them with copious amounts of whipped cream, and wordlessly slides them over to James along with a fork. His brother stares at the food for a minute, then stabs the fork right into the center of the pile and angrily begins to eat.

“So…” Al says once James has shoveled his way through half the plate. “You wanna talk about it?”

James swallows a bite, takes another shot of the margarita, and grimaces. “Not really.”

“Do you want some orange juice?” Al asks. James makes a face but nods and Al Summons the bottle of orange juice from the fridge to pour it into a glass for him. It takes about five sips of that until James slumps down in his seat with an exhausted sigh.

“Are you gonna yell at me?” he asks morosely. “Cuz I already know I fucked up.”

Al stares at his big brother, a deep and genuine panic rising inside him that he hasn’t felt so acutely since that time he stepped outside to find his sixteen-year-old sister drunk and crashed out on his front porch, smelling of alcohol and bad decisions and almost frozen to death. That time, with Lily, had freaked him out so much he’d taken her right to St. Mungo’s but this time—this time it’s not one of his siblings dying from fighting the grips of nature too long and too hard. This time, it’s just James and his terrible decisions and how wrecked he looks when he meets Al’s gaze, hazel eyes full of shame.

Those are, his father had once told them, your grandfather’s eyes. The other one, the dead one. James Potter the First.

He’d also had a kid at twenty but somehow, Al doesn’t think it really compares.

“Tell me you didn’t,” he chokes out finally. “Tell me she’s not pregnant, James.”

James drops his head. “I didn’t mean to.”

“ _James_.” Al’s voice is rising, not to the point of yelling but definitely to the point of freaking out. “Fucking hell, James, tell me it’s not _Abby_.”

James doesn’t reply. Al reaches across the counter and grabs his shoulders, thinking he might shake them, but he meets no resistance in his brother’s usually-solid muscles, and that’s enough to give him pause.

“God,” Al breathes. “ _God_.”

The desperation in his voice seems to crack James a little, because he huffs out a little self-deprecating laugh and pulls his head up. His hair swoops across his forehead, the picture of the irreverent hero’s son he’s always pretended to be, and at this angle, Al can see why sweet little Abigail Longbottom has been in love with him since forever.

“I’m sorry,” James says, and his voice is so clear despite the alcohol and the hangover, that Al knows, in his bones, that he means it. “I don’t—I meant to apologize to her—but I couldn’t. That’s why—last night—I just couldn’t face her, Al. I never meant to do that.”

Despite what all the papers and all the social media sites would have you believe, James Potter is not a man of no conscience. He buries it beneath six layers of cigarettes and alcohol and bad attitude, but Al knows first-hand that his brother feels more than rage—feels guilt, regret, and shame sometimes, too, even when he pretends not to. He’d seen it on James’ face the first time he’d actually punched Scorpius for real and Al had refused to speak to him for two months, and he sees it now, in the aftermath of what is probably the worst decision of James’ life, sitting hungover at his kitchen counter and apologizing to a girl who’s not there.

“How did it happen?” Al asks carefully. “Were you drunk?”

“No, I—” James pauses, takes a breath. He frowns a little, like he’s going back in time to the memory of that night, however many months ago it was. “I was mad at—well, at everyone. But I was mad at Neville, ‘cause he’d come over to Mum and Dad’s and told them he was disappointed in me for not, like, taking a job as an Auror like he’d offered to help me with.”

James likes disappointing people, Al notes, but he hates when it’s pointed out to him. He hates when people say, explicitly, to his face, that he’s disappointed them, partly because their parents never, ever have—even though everyone knows that they should. And everyone says it _for_ them.

“And I was mad at Lily,” James continues slowly. “Because she’d slept with Luke and not told me and he let it slip and you know he wouldn’t lie to me about that. And I was mad at him for doing it. And then I was mad at Jake for just—for just _existing_ , god. Fuck.”

Al parses this through in his mind: Luke Goldstein is one of James’ closest friends, a pretentious poet with a shit-eating grin and a way of encouraging James’ bad habits but somehow never getting _himself_ into trouble alongside him. He does, somehow, have a genuine friendship built with James, so the real surprise is that he would dare sleep with Lily knowing that. Although Lily often gets whatever she wants regardless of how anyone else feels about it, so maybe that was why.

And Jake Longbottom was Abby’s elder, eternally-sensible brother, who always takes on the most responsibilities of any kid in their whole social circle—Potters, Weasleys, Longbottoms, Scamanders, the children of the heroes who grew up together—and manages to hold the weight of the world on his shoulder without ever stumbling.

Al hates him, too. Nobody should be that poised, that graceful, when they have Harry Potter for a godfather. Just look at Teddy, after all. Jake is the best example and therefore the worst enemy of the Potter kids, all three of whom resent him for setting a benchmark they can never live up to.

Jake’s a good guy, though, which only makes it worse. Still, Al is pretty sure the appropriate response is not to _sleep with his sister and knock her up_.

“So, you slept with Abby to piss off her father?” Al asks.

James frowns. “I guess it sounds awful when you put it that way.”

“James, it sounds awful no matter which way I put it,” Al points out. “ _She_ wasn’t drunk, then, was she?”

“God, no!” James looks genuinely hurt. “What kind of an asshole do you think I am? I’d never do that. And it’s _Abby_. It’s… it’s Abby.”

The way he says it, Al knows exactly what he means: it’s Abby, the girl they’ve grown up with their whole lives. She looks like an angel and acts like one, too, and of all the girls who have drifted in and out of the orbit of James Sirius Potter, she’s the last one who should have gotten knocked up by him. The other girls, they’d be terrifically eager to have his baby, to claim his trust fund for child support money, to have the notoriety of being the mother of Harry Potter’s first grandchild, but not Abby. She loves Harry and Ginny almost more than their actual kids do.

And she loves James. Been in love with him since she was eleven and unfortunately, it’s never gotten better. Al has lost track of the amount of times he’s told her to move on and find someone deserving, because James has always been in his too-cool-for-school phase and refused to look twice at her, and Abby had just continued holding out hope that one day he would grow up and be ready for her.

Al wishes he could have saved her the trouble, the pain and the drama. She doesn’t deserve the rumors, the whispering, the talks of her being a slut and her child being a bastard. But she and James are grown-ups and they’ve both made their bad choices.

“Okay,” Al says finally, snapping back into focus. Regardless of his feelings, this is a Potter problem, and he knows best how to solve those. “Okay. How far along is she?”

James blinks, but answers, “About three months. She went to the doctor two weeks ago, and I guess it’s just got out now. She told me three days ago.”

Al frowns. “Have you been drunk for three days?”

“Maybe,” says James defensively. “Wouldn’t you?”

Al shakes his head and continues on. “Well, okay. What’s done is done. It’s out there now. Are you… are you going to marry her?”

James looks completely taken aback by this question, as if it had never even occurred to him. “What? No. Why? Should I?”

Al shrugs. “I don’t know your feelings. Are you in love with her? Do you want to marry her and raise your kid together?”

“No,” says James automatically, then winces. “No, I mean, I’m not—I’m not in love with her. It’s _Abby_. It was just—it was a stupid mistake. I can’t marry her, I…” He trails off, no doubt going along the same path that Al’s thoughts had gone. “Oh, god.”

“Yeah.” Al lets it sink in for a minute, what they both know the press is going to do to Abby, to their kid. “Okay, next question: is she going to keep it?”

James looks stricken. “I didn’t ask. Do you think she will?”

“I think you should ask,” Al says pointedly. “But yes, I think she will. She’d be a good mother, you know that. Even if it’s yours.”

James sighs and drops his head into his hands, the leftovers of his pancakes gone cold on the plate in front of him. “Neville is going to kill me.”

“Yeah.” Al pats his brother on the back. “That I can’t help you with. But you can at least mitigate the damage.”

“Al,” says James very seriously. “I need you to go with me.”

He’s about to refuse, he really is, but James looks at him with those doe hazel eyes, and no matter how much of a fight he puts up, Al knows he would do anything for his brother when it comes down to it. So instead he just sighs and says, “Finish your breakfast, and then we’ll talk about it.”

James shovels another bite of cold pancakes into his mouth. “Y’know I love you, right?” he says around the food.

Al makes a face at him. “Don’t talk while you eat.”

.

.

.

He makes James shower and put on clean clothes before he even considers Flooing him to Abby’s house, and then he still has to call Neville and make sure it’s okay, which he does with only a little bit of trepidation—he _likes_ Neville, and he consoles himself with the fact that _he_ hadn’t been the one who knocked up Neville’s only daughter.

“You and James?” Neville asks, his voice going steely cold over the phone. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Al.”

“I know,” Al inhales. “I know, believe me, Uncle Neville, I know. But—come on, you know they need to talk. If not now, then _soon_. It’s his kid, too.”

Neville heaves a bone-deep sigh and says, “I’ll ask her. If she says no, I don’t want him anywhere near her, understand?”

“Of course.” Al crosses his fingers and prays he won’t have to go back to his sneaking-around-Hogwarts days to find a way to get James and Abby to talk behind Neville’s back. “I understand completely, sir.”

Neville muffles the phone for a bit, and comes back five minutes later, sounding even more tired than before. “Abby says to meet her at Melly’s in Dragon Hill Market. Ten minutes. Don’t be late.”

“Got it.” Al tries his best to sound professional as he says, “Thank you, sir.”

“And Al?” Neville says before he hangs up, making Al hesitate. “I know it’s not your fault. But if she thinks it’s for the best to not be involved with your family at all anymore, I’m going to need you to respect that. I know she’s your friend, too, but…”

“Right.” Al feels his heart sink a little further. “I understand.”

Neville sighs again. “Take care, Al,” he says, and then hangs up. Al stares down at the phone, wondering when his godfather had turned into an authority figure to circumvent. Even during Hogwarts, Neville had been his favorite professor, and never one he felt he had to lie to. But lines are drawn differently outside of Hogwarts, he’s found, and if this battle places him on James’ side instead of Abby’s, he supposes he’s going to have to deal with it.

“Melly’s,” he reports to James, sliding on his coat. “Let’s go. We don’t want to be late.”

James looks rather like he _does_ want to be late, but gets up anyway and the two brothers Apparate over to Dragon Hill Market, where the afternoon sun has just begun lowering—it had taken way longer to get James dressed and ready than expected. The marketplace is slowing down from its usual hustle and bustle at this hour, but all the restaurants are still lit up creating a warm golden glow over the walkways.

Melly’s is a little American café tucked into a corner, with orange curtains and the best fizzy drinks Al’s ever had. Dragon Hill is supposed to be an international hub, hidden in the heart of London, where wizards and witches can get a taste of magical styles and foods from all over the world. It’s a lot more classy than his and James’ usual haunts but he does like it; their parents had brought them here a lot as kids to ‘expose them to new ideas.’

“Where is she?” James says, jiggling his leg as he pretends to sip at his iced tea. Al watches him in part-amusement and part-concern. James had actually taken time to put in effort into his appearance for this, so he’d traded out the leather jacket for a blue sweater and non-ripped jeans that he’d stolen from Al’s wardrobe and spelled to his size, and he honestly looks almost respectable.

At least, he might if not for the tattoos spiraling around his wrists, and the black eye still healing despite the charms Al has laid on it. Rose could’ve done it better, had always been better at Healing than him, but he didn’t want to call her for this. Rose is good at dealing with James in certain circumstances only.

And then, there’s the whole thing with Scorpius that he would rather not get into at the moment.

“Relax, we’re early,” says Al, although he’s getting a little antsy himself. “She said she’ll be here, and Abby always keeps her word.”

That’s the thing about Abby—no matter what the world lays at her feet, no matter all the kids that mocked her for being Professor Longbottom’s daughter, no matter how much trouble she’d gotten into being a close friend of the Potters and Weasleys—she’s a good person through and through. She’s never broken a promise, she always helps him when he’s gotten himself into trouble, she’s fixed up his broken bones more times than he can count.

She doesn’t deserve any of this. Al is halfway to feeling sad about it again when Abby walks through the doorway of Melly’s.

There’s only five other people in the café, but it seems like everyone stops and stares. Abby meets their scrutiny with her head held high, looking across the booths and finally locking onto the one Al and James are sitting at. She’s wearing a loose dress—way looser than she normally wears, but it doesn’t make it immediately obvious that she’s pregnant—and comfortable sandals, and her blonde hair is tied up in a ponytail, as professional as possible.

In front of her, Al has always felt like a disaster, a failure to the legacy of their brave Gryffindor parents. Unlike with her brother, he doesn’t feel like she lords it over him, only tries her best to make him better through her sweet and steady presence. She catches his eye and half smiles, then walks over to the two of them, ignoring the bursts of whispering that have spouted in her wake.

“Hi,” says Al, a little uncertainly, rising to greet her. “You look—you look good, Abbs.”

Abby smiles and reaches forward to hug him, which surprises him enough that he hugs back, even though he can in no way be called a hugger. Still, she’s been one of his closest friends since childhood, and she always smells like her mother’s homemade peach pie.

“You, too,” Abby says fondly and brushes a loose strand of his dark hair out of his face. Al squeezes her hand and steps back so she can see James, who has also gotten to his feet and is looking at her with an expression of terror and guilt.

Abby doesn’t say anything to him. The two of them just stare at each other for a moment, and then Al clears his throat and gently pushes Abby into the booth so she’ll have his seat across from James.

“Right, well, uh,” Al begins awkwardly. “Thank you for meeting us here. Um, I know this isn’t… the best of circumstances. But… James wanted to say something to you.”

Abby blinks and turns to look expectantly at James, who has gone white and silent. Al coughs and kicks him underneath the table.

“It’s okay,” says Abby before James can find the words or that famed Gryffindor courage, though. “I know.”

“Er,” Al says. She looks calm as ever, but the tension around the table is thick enough to cut. “Should I… leave you two alone, then?”

James manages a nod. Abby shoots Al a smile and jerks her head as if to say, ‘It’s okay, go.’

Al takes a deep breath, squeezes James’ shoulder, then gets up and Apparates away as soon as he reaches the threshold of Melly’s, unable to stay in there a moment longer even if James had wanted him to.

He figures he’ll give them an hour, so instead of wandering around looking at the eclectic collection of foreign clothes and trying new French pastries or whatever, he decides to take a breather and go as far away as possible, so he shows up on his cousin Victoire’s doorstep in Brighton, where she’s rented an actual house—thereby making her perhaps the most put-together of all the Weasley cousins.

Although, as he enters in the voice-activation password spell to be let in, he thinks that might not be totally true. James isn’t the only cousin with a bad reputation in the wizarding media sphere, and Victoire hasn’t been having the easiest go of it lately, either.

“Vic?” he calls in to the blue-and-gold-decorated house, closing the door behind him. “You in?”

Much like his cousin, the house is classy and elegant, with paintings she’s bought from exclusive magical art auctions hanging around the walls, lots of photographs of her and her family, and a not-used leather couch next to a glass coffee table and a wooden bookshelf that seems to house most of her personal library.

The kitchen is even open concept, not even having an archway to get to and from the living room like his rather more cramped flat does. He finds her in there, cooking up a soup of some sort—it smells reasonably good, which is a first for Victoire, who famously cannot cook without setting something on fire.

“Hi, Al,” she greets, seeming mostly cheerful. “You’re just in time for dinner. Want some tea? I brewed a batch, just on the counter there.”

“Thanks.” Al pours himself a cup—she has these tiny little Disneyland-themed cups she got the last time her family went on vacation to Paris and they’re super cute but always make him feel huge when he drinks out of them. “What’s going on with you?”

“Just the usual.” Victoire turns her stove off and carefully ladles her soup into two bowls for both of them. “Got an auction on Saturday and Dean wants something for an anniversary gift for his wife, so it has to be perfect. Dom and Lily got in trouble again for doing, like, a ritual in the Forbidden Forest or something? And, oh yeah, every time I go outside, people ask me how I feel about Teddy and his new girlfriend, so, that’s been super fun.”

She finishes this off with a deep roll of her eyes and offers him a bowl. Al pokes at it with his spoon in interest; it almost looks edible.

“Sorry about Teddy,” he offers, taking a tentative sip as Victoire watches him. “I know it must suck. This is actually really good, what’d you put in it?”

“Carrots and caramelized onions,” Victoire says with a beam. “And I followed Grandma’s recipe this time.”

“That would make the difference, yes,” Al agrees. He smirks at her. “Remember when you almost burned down the Burrow?”

“Shut up, that was years ago.” Victoire sniffs and holds her head higher in her classic I-was-Head-Girl-and-I’m-better-than-you pose. “I’ve _overcome_ my failings, Albus. I’m a stronger person now.”

“Mm.” Al takes another spoonful of the soup, then adds, carefully, “I don’t think Teddy even likes that girl.”

Victoire’s blonde brows draw downwards immediately. “I don’t care,” she says, but then, “What makes you say that?”

“Dunno.” Al shrugs one shoulder and pulls out his phone. He opens up Lumosgram and finds Teddy’s profile, with the picture of his date out to some band party hanging onto his arms. The picture is in black and white and heavily filtered, but the girl’s got dark hair (not his type) and is wearing heels so high she’s at Teddy’s height (definitely not his type) and a snotty Slytherin look in her eyes (Al recognizes it, because he has one too, and he _knows_ that’s not Teddy’s type.)

“He probably just needed a date and picked the first girl he met at a night club. Look at him, he looks miserable.”

Teddy is, admittedly, smiling in the picture, but Al knows his godbrother, and knows there’s no way he actually went home with that girl, just like he hasn’t gone home with any of the girls he’s been seen with since his and Victoire’s engagement ended. Victoire, for her part, looks over the picture once and snorts.

“Well, that doesn’t stop people from talking.” She frowns down into her soup. “I just wish he’d, I don’t know, take a sabbatical or something. Does he need to be around London all the time? Why can’t his band go tour Spain or somewhere?”

“He does live there,” Al points out gently. Victoire scoffs and waves her hand in that French way her mother does, dismissing his point entirely. “You could always get a boyfriend, too, you know.”

“Oh, yeah.” Victoire rolls her eyes again (Al is starting to see where Lily picked the habit up from.) “Because guys are just lining up to date the bitch who broke Teddy Lupin’s heart.”

“That’s not even remotely what happened,” Al protests. “And, hello, you’re a Veela?”

Victoire’s gaze clouds ever with anger. “That only makes it worse. Did you see Skeeter’s piece in The Owlery? All about how I was a crazy bitch who turned into a bird and attacked Teddy with my Veela powers and that’s why he left me.”

“Uh, no.” Al honestly tries to avoid The Owlery, run by Lana Skeeter, as much as possible. He hates that lady more than he hates most people. “That’s stupid, though. Nobody would take that seriously.”

Victoire levels him a look over the top of her bowl of her soup and he sighs, giving in.

“Okay, so a lot of people would take that seriously,” Al admits. “That’s just because people are stupid. Trust me, look at how they treat me. Every time I step foot in Knockturn Alley I’ve gone over to the Dark side. Like, damn, I just want some frog eyes sometimes, y’know?”

Victoire shakes her head with a burst of wry laughter. “Don’t I know it. I met up with a friend in Hogsmeade yesterday, you know Julian Wood, right? And immediately everyone on Phoenyx was talking about how I was such a slut for moving on from Teddy so fast, even though Julian and I have been friends since Hogwarts! And he’s had a girlfriend for _ever_.”

“People are stupid,” Al commiserates. “Especially in our world. Did you hear Lily’s pregnant?”

“Is she? Are they saying it’s Teddy again?”

“No, this time it’s the new Transfiguration professor and she’s using him to get free booze.” Al smirks. “As if Lily needs to sleep with someone to get free booze.”

“It’s like they don’t even know her,” Victoire agrees, and then starts giggling. “God. How messed up are our lives that we’re laughing at your little sister potentially having an affair with her teacher?”

“Pretty messed up.” Al sighs and props his chin on his hand. “That professor is pretty hot, though. _You_ could sleep with him if you wanted. You never had him.”

Victoire laughs, finishing off her soup with a rather unladylike slurp. “Puh- _lease_. He’s way more your type than mine. Besides, dating purebloods is for snobs.”

Al raises his eyebrows high. “Oh, and you’re not a snob?”  

“Of course not,” she says primly. “I’m a half-breed abomination and I exclusively date people who _aren’t_ from the Sacred Twenty-Eight.” Her voice lowers to make this sound even more dramatic than it is, and Al can’t help cracking a grin.

“You know, Teddy is a Black, right?”

“Teddy has two muggleborn grandparents,” Victoire reminds him. “Doesn’t count. And he’s never worn a black tie in his life, so.”

“Hm, you’re right, that _is_ a qualification for being a snobby pureblood,” Al muses. “Does that make me a snob?”

“Definitely.” Victoire meets his stare for a minute, and then they both start laughing. “Speaking of purebloods, though, Dean wants me to tutor his niece. You know her? Annora Greengrass?”

“Scorpius’ cousin, Annora?” Al considers what he knows of the elusive, homeschooled Greengrass. “She’s a total bitch. Chased away seven nannies and twelve tutors, and counting. Isn’t she, like, seventeen, why does she need a tutor?”

“She’s going to sit her NEWTs soon and apparently she’s been struggling in a few subjects.” Victoire pulls out a piece of paper from one of her pockets and slides that across the counter to Al. “Charms, Potions, and History. I got O’s in all of them so Dean says they’d be willing to pay me a _lot_. And offer free board and meals, too.”

Al blinks. “You need that? Just to tutor someone?”

Victoire shrugs. “This is the _pureblood_ side of the Greengrasses. They still live in the eighteenth century, I guess. But… it’s not a bad offer.”

She’s toying with the wrinkled edges of the paper, which lists out the details of the job offering. Al stares at her incredulously. “You’re not seriously considering it. That girl is a _nightmare_. Scorpius took me over to Greengrass Manor once and she tried to set me on fire.”

“I’ve heard,” Victoire says, but when she meets his gaze, this time, there’s a longing in it. “But… I like to teach. And, frankly, this house is a little much to keep living in. I mean, Dean pays me well, as an art buyer, but I live alone now and… everything smells like Teddy.”

Al furrows his brow. “So… you want a fresh start… at Greengrass Manor? Of all places, Vic, come on. You could go teach at Hogwarts, you have the qualifications.”

“I know, but I don’t have my teaching certificate, and this could be a good way to earn it,” Victoire points out. “Dom says I should do it. She says autumn solstice is a time for change or whatever.”

Al rolls his eyes. “Dom’s a weirdo,” he says, dismissive even though he actually quite likes Dominique, in all her strange, astrology-obsessed weirdness. “What did Louis say?”

“I haven’t told anyone else,” Victoire admits. “Dom was just there when I got the letter. She snuck out of Hogwarts somehow.”

Al, who knows very well that James had left the Marauders’ Map to Lily when he graduated, stays quiet on that front. “Right, well… I mean, Vic, I’ve _met_ Annora. She’s a nightmare. But if you think this is a good move for you…”

Victoire exhales a deep breath. “Okay, I know you’re not convinced. What if you come with me to Greengrass Manor next weekend, to check it out? You could bring Scorpius, too, and just… help me decide, I don’t know.”

She looks so lost that Al feels his oft-rumored ice-cold heart thaw, just a little. “Alright, I’ll go with you. And I’ll ask Scorpius. But Vic… if you’re feeling so bad about all this, maybe you should talk to Teddy?”

Immediately, Victoire’s face closes over. “No.”

“But,” Al tries, “it’s been five months. And—”

“Al,” she interrupts, laying a hand over his. “I know he’s your godbrother and you love him. But just trust me on this, okay?”

“I’d trust you more if I knew what happened,” Al points out. He doesn’t often like to pry—hates when people do it to him, as a matter of fact—but the mystery of why Teddy and Victoire broke their engagement has been hanging over their entire family like a raincloud since it happened last May. He’s heard all the rumors—she was cheating on him, he was cheating on _her_ , he was cheating on her with one of their cousins, she was pregnant and he didn’t want kids (that one, at least, has been disproved), he turned into a werewolf and tried to bite her, and of course, the crazy Veela angle of Lana Skeeter.

But nobody except Teddy and Victoire knows the full truth of the argument that led to their break-up, one sunny day in May. They’d been together for five years at that point, after their first break-up while Victoire was still in Hogwarts, which had been memorable solely for her goth phase, and had seemed solid as rocks, planning a Christmas wedding for that very year—until it all fell apart.

Victoire shakes her head, strands of her blonde hair falling out of her messy bun. “It’s over, Al. It’s done with. Just forget about it.”

Al sighs and slides out of his seat, moving around the counter to where she’s standing. “If you say so,” he says, wrapping an arm around her and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I’ll see you next week, then.”

Victoire smiles wanly at him as he turns to go, but stops him when he’s at the door. “Hey, wait, Al?”

“Yeah?” He turns back to look at her, still standing in the kitchen in her oversized pink sweater with her bowl of soup in her hands. She’s one of the few cousins he truly gets along with, and he can’t fathom why Teddy would have been stupid enough to let such a good thing in his life go.

“Is it true?” she asks. “About James and Abby?”

“What about them?” he hedges.

Victoire narrows her eyes at him. “That she’s pregnant. I mean… I know James is a wreck, but he wouldn’t just knock up a girl, would he?”

“You have such a high opinion of my brother,” Al says with a grim smile. “Unfortunately, he’s an idiot, so yes, it’s true.”

Victoire’s eyes widen and then she says, “Well, fuck.”

“Yeah,” Al agrees, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. “That about sums it up.”


	2. bury hatchets

By the time he gets back to Melly’s, most of the other stores around Dragon Hill have started closing up for the evening, and Abby has already left. James is sitting alone at the booth he’d left them in, nursing a cold beer, but he thankfully doesn’t look drunk anymore, although his eyes are still sort of glazed over.

“How’d it go?” Al asks cautiously, sliding back into the booth right across from James.

James takes a moment to re-focus on him. “She’s going to keep it,” he says, voice slow and measured, like the reality of having a baby has yet to sink in. “She said—she said she wanted it, even if I didn’t.”

“Right.” Al could’ve told him that from the start. He drops his elbows on the table and leans over. “Did she say anything about whether you could be in her life?”

James frowns down at his beer. “She said… I could. If I wanted. But if I didn’t want to, she was going to go raise it on her own. Her mum’s family has this little house out in Wales, pretty far away from everything so… she said she was gonna go there, to have the baby.”

“And… are you going with her?” Al presses, like trying to pull his teeth out. “To Wales?”

“No.” James’ brow furrows. “I don’t think I can. But she said I could visit. And… I said I’d set up a fund, you know, for the baby. So she could use it for things. I mean, Uncle Neville’s pretty well off from all the Order of Merlin money but still. My responsibility, right?”

Al, who knows his brother has never taken responsibility for anything in his life, up to and including his NEWTs, sits back with a raised eyebrow. “Well, I’m proud of you. Do you know how to do that?”

“No idea.” James looks back at him, eyes wide. “She also said I’d have to tell Mum and Dad.”

“…Oh.” Of course, there’d be a catch to all this. He should’ve known James wouldn’t do anything remotely responsible if it weren’t for the threat of their parents getting properly, genuinely mad at him. The last time that had happened had been when he’d crashed his motorcycle for the third time and their mum had been so mad she’d thrown the whole bike away. Harry and Ginny, it was often said, had the patience of saints to put up with their children.

Al doesn’t think that’s quite true; all three of them inherited their tempers from _somewhere_. But it is true that his parents put up with quite a lot, all for the hopes of their kids one day sorting themselves out and learning to be happy.

None of them have managed it just yet.

“You’ll come with me, right?” James begs. “I can’t just—go and tell them I got Abby pregnant. Do you think Dad’s gonna kill me?”

“Yeah, she _is_ his goddaughter, sort of,” Al says, and James winces. “Of course he’s going to be mad. Neville’s one of his best friends.”

James groans and drops his head onto the table. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Al pats his brother’s shoulder, only somewhat sympathetically. He’s used to cleaning up after James’ messes, making apologies to the guys he’s punched, cheering up the crying girls that he’d find in empty classrooms around Hogwarts, lying to any teachers who asked where James had snuck out to that night. But this is a bigger mess than even he knows how to deal with.

“How about this,” he begins, a game plan formulating in his mind. “We go to Hogwarts and pick up Lily and _then_ go tell Mum and Dad?”

James looks up, confused. “Why would that help?”

Al shrugs. “She’s Lily. She can distract anyone from anything. She can make it sound like it’s _not_ the end of the world. She can pick a fight with Mum and Dad so that you look better. And… she’s Lily.”

She is, indeed, Lily, _their_ Lily, their little sister who delights in annoying them but they both know she would fight a thousand men for them. She’s a champion of her own world, the Gryffindor party girl princess, who collects friends and ex-boyfriends like magnets but never confirms or denies a single rumor. She’s maybe the only person, aside from him, who can knock James out of one of his moods, and probably the only person who can save the two of them from a truly nasty confrontation with their parents.

So, Al drags James out of Melly’s and the two of them Apparate to Hogsmeade, where Al sends Lily a text message: _Can u sneak out?_

She replies in strictly emojis, but he thinks the general message is ‘ _duh!_ ’ and then ten minutes later she’s scurrying out of one of the hidden exits and down the hill to Hogsmeade where her brothers are sitting at an old wooden picnic table, James tapping his fingers anxiously and Al scrolling through Lumosgram and liking his cousins’ pictures as he goes along.

“Is this about Abby?” Lily asks immediately, hopping up onto the table with no other greeting. Her red hair is braided down her back and she’s only wearing a short dress under her black robes, but at least her boots aren’t high heeled. Her face is flushed with the thrill of sneaking away and the rising chill of the evening. “It’s, like, eight p.m., by the way. I had to sneak out past the Fat Lady so you owe me for that.”

Al fishes a chocolate frog out of his pockets and hands it to her, which she accepts happily as payment. “Yes, it’s about Abby. What have you heard?”

Lily shrugs as she bites the head off the chocolate frog rather viciously. “What everyone else has. That she’s pregnant, and it’s James’, and the two of them are gonna run away and elope on Gretna Green.”

“I haven’t heard that,” says James. “Gretna Green, really?”

“Rumor mill moves fast,” Lily says, tossing her braid over her shoulder. “Tomorrow it’ll be twins. So, what’s the truth? Tell me it’s not James’ kid. I am _way_ too young to be an aunt.”

“No one’s too young to be an aunt,” Al says, furrowing his brow. “It’s not _you_ having a baby. Unless those rumors are true.”

Lily snorts. “As if. You think I’d let someone ruin my body like that?” She gestures emphatically to prove her point; Al pokes her in the side and she shrieks, batting his hand away.

“It is James’ kid,” he confirms, with a glance over at James. His brother still looks way too gloomy to say anything. “Which is just great for all of us, really. Anyway, Abby wants _us_ to break the news to our parents.”

“Ouch.” Lily lets out a low whistle. “That’s harsh. Won’t they have heard already? It’s _all_ over Phoenyx.”

“Yeah, but they won’t believe it until they hear it straight from us,” Al reminds her. “You know how Mum and Dad are. Always wanting so hard to believe the best in us.”

Lily hums in agreement and all three of them fall silent for a moment, considering how Harry and Ginny are going to take the news of their first grandkid. Al wants to kick James even more when he remembers how, when they were little, all the adults would coo over him and Abby. If it had happened under even remotely better circumstances, everyone would be _thrilled_.

“Well,” Lily says cheerfully, clapping her hands. “No use in crying over spilled milk. Let’s go home to Mum and Daddy.”

James sighs deeply, but Al only nods, and together, he and Lily take one of James’ arms each so that Al can Apparate all three of them to their parents’ house, without giving James any chance to run away.

Harry opens the door, and he already looks tired when he does. “Kids,” he greets, inclining his head. He frowns at Lily’s presence but undoubtedly knows better than to berate his kids for sneaking out of Hogwarts—something all three of them have done, repeatedly, and refuse to listen to lectures about, ever, so he knows it’s useless to try. “It’s getting late, what are you doing here?”

“We wanted to talk to you and Mum,” says Al, faking a smile. “Is she in?”

Harry waves the three of them inside. “Working late on a story, but yes, she’s in. I’ll go call her downstairs.”

The smells of home—broomsticks, the hearth, his dad’s cookies fresh out of the oven—assault him all at once and Al has to take a deep breath once he’s inside, fighting the wave of nostalgia that hits him. He and Scorpius had moved out together immediately after Hogwarts, both wanting to make their own way in the world or whatever, but nothing really compares to your childhood home.

Well, _his_ childhood home. He’s been to Malfoy Manor and the place is more chilly than the Great Lake of Hogwarts in winter. Al doesn’t know how Scorpius lived there for seventeen years.

He, Lily, and James settle down around the red-and-white living room; he chooses a leather armchair while Lily curls up on the couch and James takes an uncomfortable looking position on a sofa chair. Al gestures for him to sit up straight, which James does with only one grimace, and then Harry and Ginny are both descending the stairs, solemn as though they know what this impromptu family meeting is about.

“Shouldn’t you be in Hogwarts?” Ginny asks her daughter, thankfully averting the attention from James briefly.

Lily bats her lashes. “I couldn’t abandon my brothers to a family meeting alone, Mum.”

Ginny sighs and leans over to press a welcome kiss to Al’s temple before she and Harry sit down on the couch. He’d used to shy away from his mother’s displays of affection, but now he’s out of Hogwarts and he finds he’d missed her more than he’d thought. Of all three of them, he’d been the one who was closest to her; she’s funny in a dark humor kind of way that gets along with his Slytherin sensibilities way too well.

He’s starting to feel really bad about what they’re here for when Harry breaks the silence.

“So, what is it, son?” he asks, and though Al jerks his head up in response immediately, Harry and Ginny are both staring at James. “Is it true?”

James looks like he wants to hang his head, but keeps nervously still. “Yeah, it is.”

Harry exhales and Ginny murmurs what sounds like either a curse or a prayer under her breath. “You and Abby… oh, James,” she sighs. “Did you have to do this?”

The disappointment in the room is itching at Al’s skin, even though he’s not the subject of it, so he blurts out, “It was just an accident, don’t be mad.”

“An accident?” Harry turns his gaze to his other son, and for the first time, Al understands why other people shiver when he glares at them. Those green eyes he’s inherited from his father are the color of the Killing Curse, and then burn when Harry turns the full force of them on him. “Al, an accident is missing the train or forgetting your keys. This… this is something else.”

“I thought you’d be happy,” Lily pipes up, in that blankly cheerful Gryffindor way where she knows she’s saying something that will undoubtedly set someone off. “You’re finally getting a grandbaby, and before anyone else, too!”

“Lily,” Ginny says with an audible frown. “Of course we would be happy about a grandkid, but you kids are way too young. _Abby_ is way too young. Did you even consider what this might do to her?”

“Um,” says James at the same time as Al says, “We already talked to her.”

Harry and Ginny both turn to look at Al incredulously. “You… both talked to her?” asks Harry.

“Well, mostly James,” Al admits. “But I saw her, too. She looks—she’s doing okay, I think. I know it’s not the best of circumstances, but come on. It’s _Abby_. She’d never be cruel about it, we’ve known her forever.”

“Yeah,” agrees Lily. “Of all the girls he could’ve knocked up accidentally, he actually picked a good one.”

Ginny cuts a glare at he daughter. “That is _not_ what this is about, young lady. This is about James being—”

“A disaster?” James interrupts with a rueful grin. “Believe me, Mum, I know. Everyone is just lining up to tell me about it. You think I don’t know how terrible this looks?”

“Forgive us, son,” says Harry in a heavy sort of voice, “but you knowing something looks terrible and you actually caring about it are two different things.”

Al feels himself prickle at the insult to his brother, just as he sees Lily sitting up straighter. The three of them have always had the urge to defend one another, especially against the truth, and even against their parents, but James looks at both of them sharply and waves them down.

“I care about Abby,” James says, cold and insistent. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I do. And I wanna be there for her. And I just—I know I’m a screw-up, but she wants the baby and… I want to be in its life. That’s all I wanted to say.”

Harry and Ginny have both gone quiet, looking at each other in that silent telepathy way that they have. Al trades glances with Lily, both of them debating what their parents might be thinking about, as James sits there at the head of the room, staring at nobody and twisting his fingers around.

“I think that’s very mature,” Lily announces, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “D’you think if it’s a girl, Abby will name it after me?”

“Lily Longbottom is a terrible name,” Al says before he can help it.

“Fuck you,” retorts Lily, sounding actually offended. “It’s a great name. Everyone loves alliteration.”

“Don’t curse,” says Ginny automatically. Lily sticks her tongue out at Al instead.

“Listen,” Harry says, and leans over to place a hand on James’ knee, who stares at it like it’s something alien. “I’m sorry, we jumped to conclusions. If you’re planning to be a good father to your kid, of course we’re going to support you, and Abby. And you know we love you no matter what.”

“Sure,” says James tonelessly. Of all three of them, he’s always had the hardest time believing that—Al knows he was their mother’s favorite, and Lily is still and always will be the apple of their father’s eye, which leaves James out in the cold, jumping from fight to fight and pretending it doesn’t bother him when people sneer that he’ll never be worthy of his great and wonderful parents.

“James,” says Ginny firmly. “Look at me.”

Al watches his brother as he turns his head up, his hazel eyes dark as he meets his mother’s gaze. The line of his throat is long and still, even as his Adam’s apple bobs in a swallow; he’s never seen James look this scared before. Except maybe once, that time in Al’s sixth year when he’d ended up in St. Mungo’s for doing something really stupid at a Hogsmeade house party with Dark magic and drugs, and James and Lily had both been by his bedside when he’d woken up, shivering and terrified out of their minds.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” James whispers, and it takes him forcibly back to that night, when James had said, _Al, you fucking idiot_ , in exactly the same tone of voice: helpless and desperate and trying so, so hard not to break.

“Come here,” Ginny says, and opens her arms just in time for James to fall into them. “It’s okay, James. It’s okay. We love you anyway.”

“Yeah,” says Lily, shifting over on the couch so she can join the hug. “You’re gonna be a great dad.”

Al sees James’ shoulders move in a self-deprecating laugh, but as Lily reaches out for his hand to connect him to the rest of the family, he begins to almost believe his parents, that everything will be okay. It’s a mantra they’ve repeated over and over, when Al nearly died, when Lily ended up in the hospital, every time James came home from school with bleeding red knuckles, their parents have told them, _it’s gonna be okay_.

As if they could wish away the pain of the media and the reality of growing up under a shadow just like _that_. Al squeezes Lily’s hand tight and wishes so hard, he thinks he might break himself.

.

.

.

Al takes Lily back to his place for the night, since she refuses to go to Hogwarts, and he wants to give James some space with their parents to talk about the baby and everything he has to do now. He’s hoping Scorpius won’t be in, because Scorpius and Lily together is either dynamite or a car crash waiting to happen, and there’s no telling which it will be this time.

Of course, he should’ve known his luck wouldn’t be that good. Scorpius is wide awake and just getting some of his famous banana bread out of the oven when he unlocks the door and lets Lily enter.

“Oh, hello,” says Scorpius in surprise, looking up from the oven to see Al and Lily standing there. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Hogwarts?”

“I dropped out,” says Lily, deadpan. “Is that banana bread? I want some.”

Scorpius sends Al a questioning glance as Lily bounds into the kitchen to grab herself a plate. “What’s going on?” he asks helplessly.

“She’s staying the night,” says Al with a shrug. “It’s a weekend, so she won’t be missed. And we just came from a family meeting, so.”

“Ah, yes,” Scorpius drawls. “Everyone knows the best thing to do after a family meeting is to let _another_ one of your siblings crash on your couch.”

Lily pops her head over the counter. “I’m not sleeping on the couch.”

“You’ve never even had siblings,” Al points out to Scorpius, ignoring his sister. “Stop pretending you know things you don’t.”

“I have a lot of cousins!” Scorpius protests, slicing himself some banana bread after Lily has taken her own, rather large share. “I know how this works. And I’m just saying, but Orion would never just let his sisters sleep over at his flat without a really good reason.”

Al looks him dead in the eye. “We’re about to be aunt and uncle, is that a good enough reason?”

Scorpius winces. “I guess so. You don’t have to go all ice cold Slytherin on me, you know.” He sounds genuinely a little hurt, probably because Al had used the glare on him earlier that day, and despite himself, Al finds himself softening, melting like he always does around his best friend.

“Sorry, mate,” he says, putting on his best impression of being contrite. “It’s been a long day.”

Scorpius makes a small noise of sympathy, and gestures to his banana bread. “Have some. It always makes me feel better.”

Al cuts himself a slice as Lily hops up on one of their stools and Scorpius flops down on their couch in the living room. “By the way,” he calls across the divide to his best friend. “I got a favor to ask you.”

“This better not be like the time you made me taste-test some new potion of yours,” Scorpius says. “I was picking pygmy puffs out of my hair for _days_.”

Al snickers at the memory of that, sitting down on the couch next to Scorpius. “No, it’s not that. Vic told me she’s got an offer to tutor your little cousin, and she wants me and you to go over to Greengrass Manor with her this weekend to check it out with her.”

“Oooh.” Scorpius’ eyes light up. “She’s gonna tutor Annora? Good luck to her.”

“Hasn’t decided yet,” Al says pointedly. “I told her not to, since Annora is a total nightmare, but… I guess she wants something new to do.”

“I guess it must get pretty boring just buying paintings for Uncle Dean,” Scorpius agrees thoughtfully. “Even though he pays her well. Is this because Teddy dumped her?”

Al winces. “We don’t know that’s what happened.”

“I heard _she_ dumped _him_ ,” Lily chimes in, taking her plate and coming down to the living room to sit with them, clearly not liking being left out of the action. “Then again, I heard that from Kathryn Creevey so she’s probably not the best source of gossip.”

“I heard he cheated on her with you,” Scorpius tells her.

Lily smiles, devilish. “Could you blame him?”

Al tweaks a loose strand of her hair and she shakes his hand off. “Don’t be crass. Teddy would never go after one of Vic’s cousins because he knows Dad would kill him. And so would Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur. And Dominique. And probably Louis, too, he’s never liked Teddy.”

“Louis is smart,” Lily agrees sagely. “Didn’t he always _say_ Abby should stay away from James? And now look what’s happened.”

“Hey.” Al kicks her gently. “This doesn’t have to be the end of the world. Maybe it’ll help James shape up.”

Scorpius snorts. “Can’t even picture that,” he says, then yelps as Al digs his elbow into his side. “ _Ow_.”

“James will only shape up when James _wants_ to shape up,” Lily dismisses, finishing off her banana bread with a pop of her spoon. “Do you think he and Abby are gonna fall in _love_?”

“No,” says Al at the same time as Scorpius says, “God, that poor girl,” and earns himself another elbow.

“ _What_?” Scorpius demands, nursing his rib. Al shoots him a dirty look and doesn’t say anything. Scorpius _knows_ not to be a dick about Al’s siblings, but he insists on stoking the flames every chance he gets.

Lily pouts at the both of them. “Why not? I think it’d be romantic.”

“It’s not romantic, he’s basically ruined her life,” says Scorpius. Al only sighs. “The girl is pregnant at nineteen and now she’s going to have to be mother to _James Potter’s_ offspring. And she’s not going to be able to go to Healer school or whatever it is she wanted to do, I dunno, and everyone _knows_ he’s gonna be out fucking some other pretty girl as soon as he gets in a bad mood again, so…”

All three of them let that sit for a moment. Al knows Lily wants to jump to James’ defense just as badly as he does, but there’s nothing they can really say in retaliation. Scorpius is, unfortunately, correct. James has sharper mood swings than anyone else in the family, and he’s very good at taking other people down with him.

Al offers, “It’s not the seventeen hundreds, she can go back to school or get a job even with a baby.”

Scorpius snorts. “Sure, and I expect James will be so happy to be a loyal house-husband, right?”

Al takes a more sullen bite of his banana bread than is probably deserved—it’s pretty good, actually. He doesn’t have an answer. He knows his parents will help James set up a child support fund, and maybe James will finally hold down a steady job, but he’s not about to marry Abby, and whether or not he’ll be a good father is entirely up in the air.

Lily is frowning at Scorpius, hard. “What’s your problem with him anyway?”

“My problem?” Scorpius stares at her, dumbfounded. “What’s _my_ problem? He hates me! He has for years! Why don’t you ask him what _his_ problem is?”

“I already know his problem,” says Lily, sliding a sharp glance at Al. “He thinks you’re bad for Al.”

Al sends her a warning look. This is dangerous territory, and he doesn’t need to add Scorpius finding out about his stupid crush on him to his already extensive list of problems, starting with James and ending with Lily herself.

“He’s a dick,” says Scorpius, sounding offended by the very concept. “I’m not bad for Al. We’ve been best friends for eight years, shouldn’t he have gotten over it by now?”

“You do encourage me to be an asshole,” Al points out fairly.

Scorpius makes a ‘tch’ sound. “You’re an asshole anyway. I just helped you embrace it. Besides, he’s way worse than you so I don’t see where he gets off.”

“It’s not about being an asshole,” Lily begins hotly, but Al stands up and makes a fuss about grabbing her empty plate before she can continue.

“Alright,” he says, pitching his voice louder so Lily can’t keep talking anyway. “I think it’s time for bed. Lily, you can take mine.”

“Where will you sleep?” Scorpius asks, getting to his feet, too. The energy in the room has shifted, suddenly more fragile and electric since Lily had opened up the conversation to dive into the dark ends of Al’s psyche, which he hates letting people near, even when it’s Scorpius. Especially when it’s Scorpius.

Al shrugs. “I’ll make the couch comfortable.”

“Or _you_ could go shag Rose again,” Lily points out sweetly, making Scorpius whirl on her. She flutters her eyelashes and adds, “Since you both seem to enjoy being trending topics on Phoenyx all the time.”

“Lil, that’s not fair,” Al says before Scorpius can explode on her. “You know Rose hates that.”

Lily, who has long been aware of his feelings for Scorpius, and how much it kills him when Scorpius and Rose are ‘on again’, ignores this with practiced scorn. “Then how come these two are always falling all over each other in public? There are ways to have a secret relationship, you know, but no, you guys always end up on the front page of The Owlery _somehow_ , right?”

Scorpius gets in her face before Al can stop either of them. “If you’re implying something, Lily, just come out and say it,” he hisses.

Lily pushes herself up on her tip toes and presses a finger into Scorpius’ chest, making him rock backwards. “You like the attention you get from dating Ron Weasley’s daughter, and that’s _it_.”

Clearly, Scorpius hadn’t expected her to _actually_ say what she was implying, because his grey eyes go wide and then narrow in anger. “You think I don’t care about Rose,” he says slowly, dangerously. Al watches him from the sidelines with the helpless feeling of watching a train crash.

“I think you don’t care about anyone but yourself,” Lily snarls, building herself up on Gryffindor righteous anger. “If you did, you might open your eyes a little more and see what’s right in front of you and see that you and Rose aren’t good together but you _don’t_ and you _never will_ because you’re a spoiled pureblood brat who doesn’t ever think about anyone else’s feelings, even when you pretend to care. And if you really liked Rose, you’d leave her the fuck alone, because all you ever do is distract her from what she really cares about, her actual _job_ , and turn her into a mess just because _you_ need someone to keep your bed warm at night.”

There is an eerie, deadly quiet that follows Lily’s proclamation, both Al and Scorpius shocked into silence from everything she’s said. Lily herself only stands there for a minute, breathing heavily, still glowering at Scorpius, until she breaks the silence with a ‘hmph’ and turns on her heel.

Al lets out a slow and horrified breath, pressing his hands into his eyes as Lily storms into their bedroom and slams the door shut behind her, leaving him alone with Scorpius.

“Look,” he begins, desperate for damage control. “It’s been a pretty emotional day, so don’t listen to her, she’s just—”

Scorpius interrupts him, still staring at the place Lily had been with a strange look in his eyes. “Al… both your siblings hate me. Like, properly hate me.”

Al shakes his head, already feeling the conversation slip away from him. “That’s not—I mean, yeah, James does, but you and Lily have gotten along before. It’s just a Gryffindor thing, you know how they are with Slytherins.”

Scorpius turns to look at him and Al nearly quails under the weight of his silver-gray gaze. “Did I do something?” he asks softly. “To you?”

Al’s stomach churns, guilty and uneasy. Of course Scorpius knows the three of them well enough to guess that the only reason James and Lily would hate anyone so much is if he did something to hurt their brother.

What is he supposed to say? _Yes, they’re mad at you for breaking my heart repeatedly over the past five years. They’re mad at you for sleeping with Rose, for not knowing how I feel about you, for never stopping to look. They hate you for sending me on a suicidal spiral in sixth year. They hate you so much and it’s all my fault because I never told you the truth._

“Scor, you’re my best friend,” he says finally. Scorpius still hasn’t looked away. “Just forget about James and Lily, alright? It’s you and me. Forever.”

This isn’t quite true, and he knows Scorpius knows it, because as deep as their friendship goes, Albus-and-Scorpius will never truly have the bond that James-Albus-and-Lily do; Scorpius will never truly _know_ Al, in all the ways that Al is unknowable to everyone else, will never understand the darkest depths of Al’s heart the way James and Lily do. And it’s not his fault—it’s because Al won’t let him in like that, _can’t_ let him in like that, too afraid of heartbreak to do anything about it.

But Scorpius inhales, and exhales, and then meets the hand Al’s put out for a fist bump. “Yeah, you got it.” He laughs, a little dryly. “Sorry. I don’t usually let her get to me like that.”

Al shrugs. “Like I said, we’ve all had a long day.”

“No kidding.” Scorpius studies him consideringly. “Hey, what do you say we go out tonight instead?”

.

.

.

Scorpius brings him to Polyjuice, the most hipster of all wizarding night clubs, in Edinburgh through their purple Floo system—green is too basic for them, apparently. Surprisingly, the place is pretty packed; he guesses quite a few of the Hogwarts sixth and seventh years have snuck out to this club, as it mostly boasts a very young clientele.

“You like this place?” Al asks in surprise as Scorpius navigates them through the throngs of dancing teenagers and young adults and over to a more secluded, curtained-off booth in the back. “Does one of your relatives own it or something?”

“Believe it or not, my relatives don’t own _everything_ in Wizarding Britain,” says Scorpius snottily, but he huffs out a laugh after a minute anyway. “Nah, it’s just fun to come here. You usually will bump into someone you know. And the drinks are _insane_. Like, legitimately. Check it out.”

He and Al sit down as the music blares some old-school Weird Sisters overhead, making the floor pound with the noise and the dancing. Scorpius slides Al the drinks menu and points to the cocktails selection, which has various strange concoctions listed such as ‘Sanguine Zombie’ and ‘Insanity Espresso.’

“You just press the button here,” explains Scorpius, pushing the purple button in the center of the table. Immediately a holographic menu pops up and he scrolls through it for a bit before landing upon the ‘Mint Joker,’ of which he orders two. In a minute flat, the drinks have popped up in front of both of them, tall mint-green smoothie-like substances with whipped cream and pink raspberry sauce drizzled over the top.

“They’ve got rum in them, don’t worry,” Scorpius assures him, taking a long sip of his. “It’s really good.”

Al doubts that, but he chances a sip anyways. It tastes very minty but also sweet and then the kick of the rum sets in and he draws backwards with a wince. “That, ah, certainly is something.”

Scorpius grins at him and is about to say something else when someone new slides into the circular table right next to him.

“Hey, little cousin,” says Orion Thomas cheerfully, tossing an arm around Scorpius. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Al watches curiously as Scorpius pretends to groan but looks rather pleased to run into his cousin. Scorpius has always pretended not to care about his half-blood cousins, Orion, Violetta, and Megara, but since becoming friends with Al and Rose and becoming way more loose about pureblood traditions, he’s started to enjoy their company a lot more, especially Orion, who is three years older and a total riot to be around. He’s also given both of them quite a few tattoos with a nice discount at his parlor, so Al would like him for that alone.

“You here with someone?” Scorpius asks as Orion orders himself a drink called ‘Vodka Volcano.’ It turns out to be a glass of glowing-red vodka sputtering orange fizz everywhere.

“Mm, not exactly,” says Orion, leaning back in his seat and offering Al a smile of greeting. “I brought Sebastian but I don’t think he’s having much fun.” He jabs a thumb in the direction he’d come from, where Sebastian Rosier is leaning against a wall and glowering at everyone having a good time.

Al cringes and ducks his head down over his Mint Joker. Sebastian is the president of Nightsbane, the Slytherin secret society he and Scorpius had joined in their fourth year, and he is notoriously difficult to please. When Al had messed up one of their Dark spells at that party in sixth year and nearly gotten himself killed, Sebastian had been close to kicking him out of Nightsbane altogether, but Scorpius had pleaded on his behalf so he could stay.

Sebastian had been pissed beyond measure that Al had almost let outsiders discover the kinds of magic they were crafting in Nightsbane, so Al had been on probation all the way up till graduation. Now, a year later, Sebastian still doesn’t like him, but he at least allows Al to work at their underground club for extra money, so that’s something.

“Hey,” Orion says, noticing the look on his face. “Don’t stress. I wouldn’t let him be a dick to you in public.” He flashes Al a grin and slides his Vodka Volcano over to him. “Try it.”

“I can handle myself,” Al says in response to the first statement, to which Scorpius snorts and Orion smirks. The two of them really are more alike than Scorpius would ever admit. Tentatively, he takes a sip of the Vodka Volcano—it burns, of course, but in a good way, all the way down his throat till he wants more, like cigarettes.

“It’s crazy,” Orion remarks off-handedly. “I remember when you guys were just baby first years and now look at you, all grown up.”

He ruffles Scorpius’ hair, and Scorpius bats him aside irritably. “You were just a baby fourth year, so don’t get so cocky,” he says. “We saw you go through puberty.”

“And get rejected by Donatella Valentine,” Al adds, returning the smirk with a meaner one of his own. Orion, who has inherited his father’s dark complexion but somehow his mother’s ability to blush, rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, I don’t even like girls,” Orion sighs. “Too much drama. Right, Potter?”

Al takes a measured sip of his Mint Joker before replying. “I actually _don’t_ like girls, Thomas,” he points out. “ _You_ were just talking about how hot my cousin Victoire is.”

Orion raises an eyebrow and looks at him more carefully. “Fair point,” he says, sounding impressed. “But I was only saying that because my dear old Uncle Aeneas wants her to come live with them and teach Annora how to make a potion properly, not because I want to tap that.”

“Oh, yeah,” Scorpius says, waving a hand at Al. “We’re supposed to go over there with her this weekend and check the place out.”

Orion glances at his cousin. “You’ve been to Greengrass Manor a thousand times, Scor.”

“Yes, but I want to see Annora try to rip Victoire’s hair out,” says Scorpius with an unrepentant grin. “Don’t you?”

“Maybe I’ll stop by,” Orion says after a moment of thought. Al frowns at both of them as they start laughing. “Alright, well, I think Sebastian is about to burn a hole in that poor girl’s head, so I should go take care of that.”

He lifts a hand in goodbye to Al and Scorpius and slides out, leaving his Vodka Volcano behind for Al. Sebastian is, indeed, still in the corner, having apparently found some girl who pissed him off and glaring daggers at her.

Al looks at Scorpius, already feeling hazy enough from the two drinks to start cataloguing the way his blond hair falls into his face and the tilt of his lips in a smirk as he watches the crowd. “Your cousin’s weird,” he announces.

“Not as weird as yours,” Scorpius retorts, and pushes the button. “Let’s get some more drinks. I have a tab on here and I want to not remember this night at all.”

So, Al gets truly, properly drunk with his best friend, as the night drags on and people drift in and out of the club, floating around their table. Some of them dare to stop by, but most people are too scared of the Slytherin Potter and Scorpius Malfoy to really stop and talk, unless they’re pretty girls that get hooked by Scorpius’ irresistible beckoning smile. He knocks back drink after drink—proper drinks this time, like Firewhiskey and Veela Vodka—until he’s almost forgotten all about James and Abby and Lily and Rose and everyone in between.

Orion comes back at some point, maybe around midnight, this time sans Sebastian. Al is lying stretched out on the seats, his legs draped over Scorpius’ lap as his best friend gesticulates wildly to two Hufflepuff girls, probably still in Hogwarts, who are hanging onto his every word and pretending Al doesn’t exist.

“You alright?” Orion asks him, looking just a little skeptical. He’s been drinking, too, but clearly not as much as his little cousin, whose grey eyes have gone bright from the alcohol and keeps accidentally making his drink burst into flames.

“Totally,” Al drawls, although he’s starting to get the headache that comes from staying too long in a crowded club when he’s already tipsy. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him home by his bedtime.”

Scorpius’ typical bedtime was around 3 a.m., so this does nothing to reassure Orion. “I’m supposed to stay till morning,” he informs Al, raising his voice to be heard over Scorpius, even with the muffler charms they’d put around their table to blockade the pounding music and laughter from beyond. “Owe the girl running this joint a favor. If he gets out of control, call me.”

Al flashes him a thumbs up and watches Orion as he disappears back into the crowd, his golden bomber jacket standing out starkly in the neon-lit crowd. It’s got a snake on the back, in bright green, and Al can’t stop staring at it because it’s so Slytherin, but golden is a Gryffindor color, and he knows Orion is the product of a Slytherin-Gryffindor union, but it’s still _weird_. Two things that shouldn’t go together.

He looks back at Scorpius, who is leaning back with a heavy, happy sort of sigh. The Hufflepuff girls have vanished, probably to sneak back into Hogwarts before somebody notices they’re missing, and Scorpius meets Al’s eye and winks at him. Al wonders if it’s like him and Scorpius, the gold and the green, him from a Gryffindor blood traitor family and his best friend from the land of Slytherin purebloods. They never should’ve met, that day on the train. Never should’ve both ended up in Slytherin, and become best friends.

He never should have fallen in love with him. Of all the other ways Albus Potter defies expectations, he knows this is the worst way. The most heartbreaking path he could’ve chosen. If he’d been happy with just friends, he might not be so messed up now.

But Scorpius sits up slowly and runs his hands over Al’s jean-clad legs, absentmindedly like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing, his slender fingers catching on a ripped hole just near his left knee and pressing into the skin there, and it takes everything in Al to repress his shiver.

Maybe he was just born to be messed up. Couldn’t help it, truly. It makes it feel a little better when Scorpius grins at him and says, “Mate, you should really get out there. Find yourself a pretty bloke to bring home. I won’t even tell Lily.”

Al snorts, that same heavy weight dropping like lead on top of his heart. How many times has he done this? “Not in the mood, Scor.”

Scorpius makes a disappointed noise. “You’re never in the mood. You know the good thing about being gay? You don’t even have to worry about getting anyone pregnant. Totally lucked out there.”

“Yeah,” says Al, hearing a dull roaring in his ears. “Definitely lucky.”

Scorpius’ other hand finds another hole in his jeans and his thumb swipes casually over it. It’s not anything meaningful, not really; the two of them have been so close for so long that they’ve long since eschewed most boundaries, to the points where every few weeks there’s a story in the papers about them being lovers. Usually, Al just goes with it, especially since Scorpius is generally a touchy drunk, but today, in the aftermath of James-and-Abby, and Lily’s blow-up at Scorpius, he’s on edge and way, way too drunk to deal with this.

“I’m gonna go out for a smoke,” he announces suddenly, and swings his legs over Scorpius’ lap and back onto the floor without warning. This disorients Scorpius enough that Al escapes without having to offer him an invitation, or answer any questions, sneaking around the back of the club till he finds a decent, secluded spot where he can pull out his favorite muggle cigarettes and take an actual breath.

Orion Thomas finds him here half an hour later, looking tipsy and maybe a little high—amateur mistake, to mix weed and alcohol and magic, but who is Al to judge? Orion at least is sober enough to look worried when he spots Al in the shadows.

“What’re you doing out here, Potter?” he asks as Al starts in on his third cigarette. “Scor’s still in there.”

“Is he?” Al asks in a low voice—it’s all he can manage, really. “What’s he doing?”

“Making out with some girl who’s definitely going to regret it in the morning,” Orion says, propping himself up on the wall next to Al. In the moonlight, his dark skin glows silver; he’s ditched the golden jacket and is wearing only a black t-shirt and jeans underneath it. “Thought he was going with your cousin, wasn’t he?”

Al rolls his eyes and exhales a spiral of smoke. “On again, off again,” he hums. “They’ll never get it together. I bet they had another fight, that’s why he dragged me out here.”

“They do seem like a volatile mix,” Orion agrees. “Can I have one?”

Al shrugs and offers the package for Orion to take a cigarette of his own. “Why aren’t you in there?”

“Got bored babysitting,” sighs Orion. “I love Scor, believe me, he’s the most tolerable of my cousins by _far_ , but he’s such a shithead. All those girls, and for what? He wouldn’t know a real relationship if it smacked him in the face.”

Al snorts. “He doesn’t like sleeping alone.”

Orion lights his cigarette with his wand and tosses him a sharp glance. “Isn’t that why he has you?”

Too drunk to not be on the defensive, Al bristles. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, come on,” Orion chuckles, running a hand through his blond hair as he presses the cigarette to his lips. Al watches him take a long drag of it, his mouth curled around it, and then breathing out the smoke so it drifts off into the night sky. “Everyone knows you’re in love with him.”

Al opens, then closes his mouth. “I’m not in love with him,” he lies. It’s too cold out for this conversation; he wants nothing more than to be back in bed instead. He should’ve never let Scorpius drag him out here tonight, of all nights.

Orion glances sidelong at him, and even though it’s dark, Al can read the skepticism in his gaze perfectly. “It’s not a bad thing, you know. My sixth year, I was hopelessly in love with this guy—muggleborn, Ravenclaw, dunno if you know him, Damian O’Malley.”

“Sure,” Al says, even though he definitely has no recollection of this dude. But then, he’d been pretty insulated in Hogwarts. Having so many cousins around makes it hard to notice what other people are up to. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing,” Orion says with a huff of laughter. “Died inside every time he talked to me and that’s it. Eventually, we graduated, I moved on, whatever. But it sucks, keeping something like that inside you, and I wasn’t even living with him.”

Al’s too tired for truths. “It’s not like that,” he insists. “It’s just Scorpius. It’s nothing. I just—it’s nothing.”

If he says it enough times, maybe it’ll stop being a lie. Orion is still looking at him with something akin to pity and that more than anything pisses Al off, so he crumples up his half-finished cigarette and tosses it on the ground.

“Fuck you, Thomas,” he hisses, retreating back into that cold, Slytherin shell of himself he had been in all through second and third years, bitter about all the rumors that beleaguered him since starting Hogwarts, the kind his parents had always protected him from before. “You don’t know shit about me.”

“Right,” Orion says, drawing himself up and matching him easily in iciness. “Because no one does, right?” And the way he says it, _no one_ means _Scorpius_ , and Al is suddenly filled with a burning, white-hot anger—at Orion, at himself, at Scorpius, at Rose, at everyone around them. It nestles in the pit of his stomach and builds itself higher and upwards, until he’s shaking, until all he can see is Orion and the stars behind him and all he can hear is Scorpius laughing and the music of the club blaring and suddenly, suddenly—

Al lurches forward, grabs Orion by the shirt and crushes his mouth to his, and it all goes very, very quiet all at once.


	3. gotta leave before you get left

He’s nursing a hangover at his kitchen counter at eight o’clock the next morning, having gotten approximately zero hours of sleep, when the consequences of last night decide to catch up to him.

“Oh, my _god_!” exclaims Lily, way, way too loudly for his level of headache, banging open the bedroom door and marching right out into the kitchen. “Did you really fuck _Orion Thomas_?”

Al groans, holding his head in his hands and not even bothering to look at her. She solves this problem, though, by getting up on the stool right across from him and staring him down. His favorite green t-shirt is slipping off her bare shoulders, too big for her slender frame, but he can’t even be mad about her borrowing it without permission because his headache is _killing him_.

Scorpius emerges from the living room not even two seconds later, his blond hair askew and his jacket from last night mysteriously missing. “You slept with my _cousin_?”

Al doesn’t reply, only drops his head onto the counter and imagines that the cool tile is the welcome release of death. He cannot even handle trying to explain himself, let alone trying to get Scorpius to understand his inherent hypocrisy here—something he knows Scorpius would be loathe to admit even under better circumstances.

Lily continues on, blithely, with, “It’s all over Phoenyx, somebody got a picture of you two coming back into the club and you definitely _look_ like you had sex.”

As if he asked for an explanation, she shows him the screen of her pink phone, which has the tag #AlbusPotter open on Phoenyx. There are pictures which all source to—of course, _The Owlery_ , of him and Orion at the doorway to Polyjuice, their hair messed up and a hickey visible on Al’s throat and, more embarrassingly, his fly still down.

Al shoves the phone back at her, no response except for a grunt, and slides off the stool he’d been sitting on. Scorpius tries to say something but he can’t hear it for the burning of his hangover as he stalks out of the kitchen and down the hallway into the bedroom.

He manages, after four tries, to securely spell the door shut and locked to the point that even Scorpius won’t be able to get in, and then collapses on his bed. It smells like Lily’s perfume, which does nothing to help the headache, but he is so, so tired he can’t bring himself to care for the five whole minutes it takes before sleep claims him.

When he wakes up, his headache is mostly gone, and Rose is sitting on Scorpius’ bed, twirling her wand between her fingers.

Al jolts awake at the sight of her, scrambling over to see if anyone else has gotten past his spell-locks, but neither Scorpius nor Lily are there. Just Rose, with her brow furrowed, staring at him like he’s a puzzle she has yet to solve. Which is rich, because Rose has never met a puzzle she couldn’t solve, except maybe Scorpius Malfoy.

“You cut your hair,” is the first thing out of his mouth. It’s somehow the only thing he can find to comment on.

Rose’s hand rises automatically to touch her short, frizzy red bob cut, where the ringlets stop just at her chin. She smiles shyly. “Yeah, it was getting a bit much to manage. How are you?”

Al struggles to a sitting position and finds, to his surprise, that his headache is pretty much entirely gone. “…Better,” he acknowledges, suspicious. “Did you do something to me?”

“Purifying Mist,” Rose says, tapping her wand to the heel of her hand. “It makes you calmer, gets rid of headaches. The hangover’s still there but it won’t bother you as much.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” says Al fervently. “But how did you get past my locks?”

Rose shrugs in that way where she knows the answer but isn’t going to tell you. “It’s not important. I left Scorpius and Lily out there. Actually, Lily just went home, she said she couldn’t stand to look at him.”

“Home, like home-home?” Al questions, and Rose nods. “Well, that’s good, I think.”

“Mm.” Rose is still staring at him in that therapizing way she gets from her mother, assessing and calculating. “Wanna tell me what happened?”

Her voice is steady and calm, the picture of nonjudgment. It’s strange because Rose is typically the most judgy of all their cousins, a habit she picked up from her mother, but Al thinks she goes easier on him because of the whole her-and-Scorpius thing, and because he’s pretty sure Lily had yelled her into deafness after that night in his sixth year.

Still, he can only manage a groan and falling back on his bed rather than answering. “Not particularly.”

“Alright.” He hears the sound of Rose getting up off Scorpius’ bed—god, _ew_ , he didn’t want to imagine what happened in that bed when he wasn’t home—and crossing the distance to his bed. The next thing he feels is a warm cloth being laid on top of his forehead, and it’s so nice that it feels like it soaks up the entire rest of his headache in less than a minute.

“Why’re you being nice to me?” Al asks, suspicious despite himself. It’s not that Rose isn’t generally a nice person—in fact, she is quite possibly too nice and compassionate for her own damn good—but anytime she and Scorpius get going in one of their endless cycles of sex-gossip-fighting, she tends to stay away from Al. It’s for the best, because he stays away from her, too.

Sometimes—very few times, but more often than he’d admit—he misses the easy companionship they’d had, in their childhood and their first few years at Hogwarts. Even being in separate Houses, Rose had been his best friend—until she wasn’t. This, admittedly, was more his fault than hers, with falling in love with Scorpius, joining Nightsbane, and getting so sick of people expecting the worst from him as ‘the Slytherin Potter’ that he had decided to just give them the worst he could be.

“Seems to me like you’ve been through a lot,” Rose says. She’s standing now and since she’s inherited her father’s height he has to strain to look up at her from his position on the bed. “What with James and Abby and… me and Scorpius…”

And that is, of course, the other thing perpetually driving a wedge between him and Rose. Al takes a deep breath and, for half a second, ponders how likely it is that he could just stop existing right this very second and not have this conversation.

“It’s fine,” he manages to lie. “That’s, like, not even in my top one hundred list of problems right now.”

Rose tilts her head. “What is?”

“Um, James is about ninety-five of them,” Al admits.

This gets a laugh out of her, and he smiles, unbidden. “And the other five?”

“Lily. Victoire. Orion Thomas. The fucking Owlery. And James again.”

“Okay,” says Rose, sitting down at the foot of his bed. It takes him a moment to notice she’s managed to get him to actually admit a good deal of what’s bothering him without even really trying. He sometimes thinks she’d make a pretty good Slytherin. “Well, we can fix those.”

Al levels a skeptical look at her, which is harder since he’s lying down, so he sits up to do it. “There is no way you can fix me and my siblings all in one afternoon, Rosie. I know you’re good but not that good.”

“The key,” Rose says, “is taking them in order. So, Lily. What’s going on with her?”

Al sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. There’s really no getting out of this conversation once Rose has gotten on a roll. “Just the usual. I expect she’ll be the subject of gossip again at school for skipping out this weekend, and everyone will say she was off sleeping with some thirty-year-old Ministry employee or whatever and she won’t do anything to stop them.”

“Don’t you think it’s better that way?” Rose questions. “I mean, you used to get so mad about people saying you were doing Dark magic, you would hex them and then it would just feed the rumors more. Children are cruel no matter what, Al, no matter how famous you are. Lily just ignores them and doesn’t play into them.”

“But she _does_ ,” he says desperately. “She doesn’t comment but she does act up, she only feeds the flames every time she flirts with someone—even _teachers_ , god. Just because _I_ know she wouldn’t do anything and _you_ know she wouldn’t do anything doesn’t mean there’s no good reason for everyone _else_ to suspect her.”

Rose nods, tapping her fingers thoughtfully. “Alright, but that’s not something we can fix, right? Lily will be Lily. And she’ll be done with Hogwarts by next year anyway. I know you want to save your siblings from themselves all the time but I don’t think it’s useful to work yourself up in circles about what her peers say of her. Or what Phoenyx does.”

“You’re probably right,” Al says, sullen. Rose is _always_ right. He considers, briefly, explaining the other thing, the more recent and relevant thing that happened with Lily, but since her blow-up at Scorpius had been due in part to Rose, he decides to keep that to himself for now. Rose is a good therapist when she’s not actively confronting her own issues, and Scorpius makes it so hard for her to see clearly.

He supposes he and Rose have that in common.

“Okay, then,” Rose says with a determined bob of her head, looking every inch her mother. “Moving on. What about Victoire?”

“I’m just worried about her,” Al says with a sigh, stretching out his legs, careful not to hit Rose with them. “The break-up with Teddy was months ago and she still seems like she’s in a funk. And she’s thinking about taking this tutoring job with the Greengrasses? And I don’t know why because, frankly, it’s not like she _really_ needs the money, or at least can’t get it tutoring literally anyone else on the planet except Annora fucking Greengrass. She was talking about moving out of her house and staying with them just to get away from Teddy, and that’s so…”

He struggles to put it into words. It occurs to him that, as someone who literally lives with the boy he’s been pining for since he was fourteen, perhaps he’s really missing some sort of clearer insight into Victoire’s situation. He doesn’t think he could run away from Scorpius, close himself off and bottle up everything that reminds him of Scorpius the way Victoire is doing to Teddy.

This seems to stump Rose, too, because she says disbelievingly, “ _Annora_ Greengrass? Scorpius’ bratty little cousin who gave me purple hair for a week last time I saw her?”

“The one and only.”

“That’s just mad,” Rose declares. “But… I don’t know, I guess none of us really have all the information on Victoire and Teddy, do we? Maybe there’s a piece of the puzzle we’re all missing.”

Al frowns, picking at a thread in his bedsheets. “I know it’s hypocritical of me because I hate other people being up in my business but… I wanna _know_ what it was about. They were a pillar of the family for so long, for Merlin’s sake, they were going to get _married_ this year. And then it all just fell apart and they won’t even tell anyone the real reason why?”

“Mm,” Rose says in neutral agreement. “That makes sense but it’s probably not fair. We all want to know, but it’s their business and their relationship. Have you tried asking Teddy?”

“Hasn’t everyone?”

“Maybe if you tell him about Vic’s job offer it’ll get him to open up,” Rose suggests. “And he’s your godbrother, he’s always been closer to you three than any of us. Maybe he’ll tell you something.”

It’s starting to seem like a better idea now than it had five months ago when the break-up had happened and everyone was tip-toeing around Teddy and Victoire for weeks and weeks. Al truthfully hasn’t seen his godbrother in a couple months, as Teddy has his band now and seems to be going out of his way to avoid Weasleys, and Al—well, he has his own life and messes to take care of. But it’s worth a shot, to go and see what Teddy’s been up to.

“Tell me about Orion Thomas,” says Rose, taking him out of his plans to surprise Teddy at some point this week. “I know what everyone else is saying but… Phoenyx has a way of taking everything out of proportion.”

Al huffs a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well… they’re right on that front, at least.”

Her eyebrows rise so high they practically touch her hairline. “You really did sleep with him?”

“‘Sleep with’ is a bit of a misnomer, Rosie,” says Al, smirking at her. “It was just sex. Honestly, I just needed—something, I don’t know. And he gave it to me and then I was going to go back in the club and forget the whole night but of course fucking _The Owlery_ and Phoenyx won’t let me do that.”

Rose is quiet for a bit, studying his face. “Were you going to tell Scorpius?”

“Of course not,” Al says immediately. “Don’t look at me like that. He wouldn’t tell _me_ about you and him for weeks back in sixth year, it’s the same thing. It’s _weird_.”

“Fucking your best friend’s cousin is weird?” Rose asks, and he’s so taken aback by her cursing—not that she doesn’t ever do it, but she does it so rarely that it’s usually a special occasion when she does. “I always thought it was just me.”

Al snorts but stays silent, waiting for her to work around to the point he can clearly see building in her face. Rose has always been more honest about her emotions than he has.

“I can see why you didn’t tell him,” she says finally, slowly. “Because he and Lily just had a whole argument about it.”

Al jerks in surprise. “ _What_? Why?”

“Well, I only caught the tail end of it when I got here to check on you,” Rose says. “But from what I heard… Lily was yelling at him for being a hypocrite, which is fair, and Scorpius was saying that me and him was completely different than you, ah, getting a drunken blowjob from his cousin… which is not quite as fair.”

She’s gone red, so Al makes a face at her. “Please don’t start telling me about your sex lives.”

“I wasn’t going to!” Rose says quickly. “I just meant… well, lately, the whole thing with me and him has _just_ been sex. You know we used to go out more and do other things but… I don’t know. So he is being a total hypocrite about it. And then she called him a ‘spineless shithead’ and stormed out.”

Al sighs. “Sounds about right.”

“I tried talking to Scorpius after she left, but he’s still mad at me for… we got in a fight yesterday, so.” Rose shrugs one shoulder, helpless. “It happens every time. So I just left him out there. I think he’s gone now anyway.”

Al looks at her closely. “And… you’re okay? You and Scorpius, I mean? I know it’s not easy being with him like this.”

“I’m not with him,” she hastens to clarify. “I’m really not. I know there was the whole thing and we did—we did, you know, meet up a few days ago but it was, like, super casual. And then there was the fight, and I’m pretty sure he was photographed making out with some other girl last night so….”

“Okay,” says Al, who would definitely not put in the effort of remembering all of Rose and Scorpius’ ups and downs were it not for the fact that it’s _Scorpius_. “Got it. So I’ll have to avoid mentioning you to him, won’t I?”

“Probably,” Rose says with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard for you, being in the middle of us.”

Al doesn’t point out that it’s not so much that he’s in the middle—if it came down to it, he’d choose Scorpius, and everyone knows that—but that Rose-and-Scorpius is a toxic and volatile mixture that takes everyone down with it, every single time, without fail.

But she’s been so nice to him today, he moves on and says instead, “It’s alright. I know how to deal with Scorpius. And I’ll fix the sleeping-with-his-cousin thing, take him out to a Quidditch match or something. Or buy him that new muggle video game he likes so much.”

Rose laughs, but it fades pretty quickly. “You don’t have to do so much for him, you know.”

Al stares at her, stunned. “What?”

“I mean…” Rose looks like she’s about to lose her nerve, but she rallies in true Gryffindor fashion and ploughs on. “You and him… you’re always stepping around him. Making space for him and not any for yourself. I know you won’t tell him about—the truth, and I get it, but it’s like you bend over backwards to be the perfect best friend to make up for it. And I’m not saying—that he doesn’t deserve it, I know you love him and he’s your best friend, too, but I just think… you need to take some things for yourself.”

He can’t help the laugh that catches in his throat, rueful and self-deprecating. “That’s a very nice sentiment, Rosie,” he says, even though he hadn’t been trying to be mocking. “But it’s—it’s impossible. I’m _me_. I’ve got nothing for myself anyway.”

Rose frowns. “What do you mean?”

Al waves a hand, a general, wild gesture. “I’m Harry Potter’s son. Ginny Weasley’s son. Everything about me, it’s about them. Or it’s about James and Lily. Or Scorpius— _god_. My whole life is just five other people and everything they do that affects me. How could I even take anything for myself? It’s always about one of them.”

He can see her building up to an argument, trying to press him and shake him out and make him _see_ the truth that she can see from her viewpoint, but he stops her before it comes.

“I’m not mad, Rose,” he assures her. “It’s not something—it’s not something I can get upset about. They’re my family. My best friend. But it’s just that _I_ have to make sure James doesn’t get scared and screw up this whole Abby thing, or Merlin forbid, abandon his child or something. _I_ have to make sure Lily manages to graduate Hogwarts without failing all her classes, because god knows, Mum and Dad have tried and they can’t do anything. And I have to make sure that Scorpius….”

Here, he pauses, unsure how to make her see what he sees. Rose is close with Scorpius, but it’s nothing like him and Scorpius, nothing at all. Her vantage point is completely different, and Scorpius presents a whole different side of himself to her. Al has seen him at his worst, at his lowest.

“You know things were bad for him at Hogwarts,” Al finally settles on. “With the bullying and shit. Because he’s a Malfoy. He pretends it never bothered him, but it did. He has so many self-destructive tendencies—you saw it, last night, making out with some girl he doesn’t even fucking know to get his mind off you. He’s the one who wanted us to go out, because he was so upset at—something Lily said. And whatever happened with you. And he and his cousins… they’re not like us, Rose. They’re cool but they’re not _close_. He doesn’t have a whole lot else, not the way we have our entire family behind us.”

Rose’s brow is still furrowed. “So he’s your responsibility just because he’s your best friend? He’s a grown adult, Al. He can make his own bad choices.”

“Right, well, if he’d said that about me, I’d be dead.”

He means it to be matter-of-fact, only the simple truth, but Rose’s eyes widen as if he’s said something terrible—and maybe he has, maybe she isn’t aware of how truly bad he had gotten in Hogwarts, even without her relationship with Scorpius happening—and then she exhales a low, deep, heavy breath.

“Merlin, Al.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and the two of them sit like that for a moment, just soaking up how incredibly bizarre and fucked up their lives, their hearts, and their interpersonal relationships are.

It’s kind of cathartic, so he supposes Rose at least succeeded in that.

.

.

.

Later, after Rose makes them both cups of teas and he takes a few hours to enjoy the relative peace of his flat without Scorpius or Lily or James there to mess it up, he Apparates back to his parents’ house to see if James needs any help.

What he finds, from the sounds of shouting that can be heard outside, is a warzone.

It’s Lily and James, mostly, yelling at each other, and he’s pretty sure his mother has gotten involved because he can hear her voice, and his father desperately asking everyone to calm down and…

Al is so tired. So, so tired.

Any other day, he would have waded into the warzone, figured out exactly what Lily or James said to set the other off (it could be anything, really, with the two of them, always such vicious Gryffindors), and taken several hours out of his day to calm them both down. But he’s had a pretty miserable day, all considered, since people still won’t stop @-ing him on Phoenyx about Orion, and Scorpius hasn’t come home, so instead of doing any of that, Al turns around before any of his family can see him, and Apparates away.

He ends up on the Longbottoms’ doorstep instead. Maybe because his mind had been on James and Abby, maybe because there’s still a part of him that adores his godparents more than anything, but whatever the case, he finds himself staring at their door and trying to work up the courage to knock.

It opens before he can. Abby’s older brother Jake is standing there, tall and sturdy and imposing as always. He looks at Al coolly—they’re about the same height ever since Al hit his growth spurt, but he’s never shaken the habit of looking _up_ at Jake—and raises an eyebrow, asking ‘ _Why are you here?’_ without even bothering to say anything.

Jake has been their circle’s lynchpin for as long Al can remember. Him and Victoire both, the eldest and the most mature. Jake’s only four years older than Al but he’s got this quiet kind of strength that makes him impossible to mess with, a Gryffindor to his core, and he’s more sensible than any of the Weasleys and Scamanders, up to and including Victoire. If you have a problem, you go to Jake Longbottom, and he gets it solved somehow, some way.

“Hi,” Al says a little lamely. “I was… looking for Abby.”

“Is James here?” Jake asks, not even bothering to step aside to let Al in. Apparently, the Longbottoms have put all the Potters on time-out, not just James. It itches at him, annoying because _he_ hasn’t done anything, and certainly not to Abby. He loves Abby, and he loves Neville and Hannah, and he can’t see why he’s being punished for something he didn’t do.

“No, he’s at home. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Mm.” Jake continues eyeing him for a moment, then turns back to look inside his house. Whatever he finds in there, he says, “Alright, come on in,” so presumably, Abby didn’t hate Al completely.

She looks—well, exhausted is probably the word for it, sitting at their little breakfast nook in between the living room and the dining room. There are papers all around her and she has one arm curled around her stomach, just holding it even though it’s barely rounding, and her hair is a loose blonde storm around her face, rumpled from lack of sleep.

Jake follows behind him and sits down next to Abby as Al awkwardly takes the seat in front of her. Clearly this was going to be a family meeting, even though he’d only wanted to see Abby.

“How’re you doing, Al?” Abby asks, in her usual sweet and soft kind of voice. The pregnancy and the exhaustion seems to not have put a dent into it. Al smiles across at her.

“I’m okay,” he admits. “Could be better. I came to check on you, though.”

Abby returns his smile, and then picks up a photograph from among her pile of papers and slides it across to him. “The ultrasound,” she explains.

Al stares down at it with a strange, ridiculous horror cresting inside him—the fact of the pregnancy had really only been on Phoenyx and in the papers so far, but seeing the first scan of the baby—not even fully-formed at all, barely visible among the blue lines of the photograph— _inside_ Abby, it pulls him to a skittering stop right there at their breakfast table.

“Wow,” he says for lack of anything else. “Uh… do you know the gender yet?”

“No, it’s too early for that,” Abby says. “In the next two months, probably. I don’t know if I want to know, though. Mum said she kept both of us surprises and just picked out a ton of different names.”

She says this with a glance towards her older brother, who’s still staring at Al and the ultrasound. Al looks up in time to see Abby jab Jake in the side with her elbow, making him grunt in affirmation.

“Have you started thinking about names?” Al asks. “Lily would like to offer her own for consideration.”

Abby laughs at that, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “I’ll think about it. Lily Longbottom would be…uh…”

“It’s a terrible name,” Jake mutters, and Abby elbows him again.

“That’s what I said,” Al says. He’s half-expecting, maybe hoping, that Jake might actually crack a smile, but he seems to be devoted to being as stoic and annoying as possible. Al normally wouldn’t let it bother him—people in general annoy him, for so many reasons, he’s learned to tune most of them out—but, well, it’s _Jake_. It’s Jake and Abby and he’d never thought anything could splinter their childhood friendships quite like this.

He drops the ultrasound and gets to his feet, unsure of where he’s going but knowing he doesn’t want to be analyzed under Jake’s heavy gaze anymore. Abby looks up in surprise as he stands.

“If you’re hungry,” she offers tentatively, “Mum’s left some of her tuna melts in the fridge.”

He is a little hungry, but he also thinks he may have overstayed his welcome, so he’s about to say ‘No, thank you,’ when Jake interrupts him.

“You look starved,” Jake says, and then he’s rising to his feet, too, and before Al quite knows how it’s happened he’s in the kitchen. Victoire has the same trick and he’s never figured out how they do it, but it’s annoying.

“I’m not that hungry,” Al protests, but Jake is already moving around to the fridge to get him a sandwich. “Seriously, I—”

“How’d your parents take the news?” Jake asks, cutting across him with ease.

Al narrows his eyes. He hates people interrupting him, and more than that, he hates the way Jake is clearly avoiding whatever he _really_ wants to say.

“Fine,” he says with a shrug, giving up the battle for the sandwich as Jake heats the plate up and offers it to him. “You know they love Abby. They’ll do anything to help out.”

“I’m sure they will,” Jake says. His dark brown eyes are inscrutable as he watches Al across the kitchen table. Abby’s just far enough out of earshot that Al is starting to feel like he might actually be in trouble.

“Look,” Al snaps after the third awkward bite of frankly quite delicious tuna melt. “If there’s something you want to say to me, just spit it out. I only came up to check up on Abby.”

Jake stares steadily, to the point that Al feels he might wither under his gaze, and then he sighs and shakes his head. His blond hair, usually styled up and away from his face, is falling loose into his eyes, messed up from what is probably a lack of sleep and a lot of anxiety. Al feels, quite suddenly, guilty about it.

“God, Al…” Jake runs a hand through his hair, ruining the style further. “You know I work for the DMLE?”

“…Yeah.”

“Right, well, I found out the other day—three days ago, actually, just before the news about Abby got out—that they’re working on a warrant to search Sebastian Rosier’s house for Dark artifacts.”

Al crushes the rising panic in his chest and holds Jake’s gaze as hard as he can. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Damn it, Albus.” Jake scowls. “Don’t do that. I know damn well you and Rosier run in the same circles. If you don’t get your shit out of his place, you could be in trouble.”

“Why do you care?” Al can’t resist asking, blazing with indignance all of a sudden. “I can handle myself.”

“Because I don’t want you to end up in fucking _prison_ , Al!”

Al stares at him, then laughs in a burst of dry amusement. His stomach is churning but he contains the emotion on his face to just a raised eyebrow. “Like that would ever happen.”

He doesn’t say: _Because I’m Harry Potter’s son, they would sooner build me a statue than throw me in prison, just because the tabloids are always hunting for my blood doesn’t mean they’re ever gonna be able to get it. And Dad would stop them. He would._

In a distant corner of his mind, he notes that he’s eighteen and still thinking of his father as his ultimate savior, but he files that away for later because right now Jake is looking at him with this burning, furious look and for some reason, Al doesn’t think it has anything to do with James or Abby.

“Thanks for the warning,” Al bites out, before Jake can unload a proper lecture on him. “I’ll see you around, Jake.”

“Albus,” Jake starts, and his hand darts out to catch Al around his forearm as he tries to walk around the counter. “I’m trying to _help_ you here.”

Al considers shaking himself out of Jake’s grasp, but his touch is hard and tight, his muscles strong from all the training he does, so Al doesn’t bother trying. Instead, he levels one of his iciest, most apathetic looks at him and doesn’t say anything.

Jake, in true Gryffindor fashion, breaks first with a sigh. “Look, I know you don’t like accepting help, or advice, or anything, but—”

He cuts himself off and lets Al go with a shake of his head. “Whatever. It’s your life.”

“Yeah,” says Al, and because he can’t help himself, he adds, casually and viciously, “Maybe you should focus on yours. I hear Clara’s getting engaged.”

The flash of hurt that crosses Jake’s face is enough to make him feel a little guilty—just a little. Bringing up his ex-girlfriend was probably too low of a blow, but, in Al’s defense, he _really_ hates taking other people’s advice. And Jake knows it.

“Sure,” Jake mutters, just loud enough to be heard even when Al’s at the kitchen door. “Let me take advice from the guy who got caught getting a blowjob in an alley.”

Al’s wand is in his hand before he knows it’s there, and then so is Jake’s, and then—

“ _Expelliarmus_!”

Both of their wands go flying out of their hands, landing right in Abby’s palm as she stands behind them both, looking furiously at the two of them. For a moment, Al is honestly concerned she might snap both their wands; she certainly looks mad enough to consider it.

“Both of you,” Abby says, her voice vibrating with chilly fury, “ _shut up_. You are acting like _children_.”

Al ducks his head but Jake draws himself up higher.

“ _I’m_ not the one acting like a—” He stops when Abby points his own wand at him. “Abby, I’m serious.”

“I’m serious, too,” she snaps. “And I am _not_ about to have my child’s uncles constantly getting in fights around my house. Al, come with me.”

She tosses Jake’s wand on the floor, then takes Al’s arm and drags him out of the kitchen and the house, straight to the front yard, where she stands in the dying afternoon light and looks at once sadder and older than he’s ever seen her.

“Abby,” he says carefully. “I’m sorry. You know I don’t…”

“Don’t what?” Abby smiles ruefully at him. “Don’t hate him?”

“I don’t hate him,” Al says immediately. “I don’t—god—I could never hate Jake, I swear. He’s… I mean, he’s my godbrother.”

“Yeah,” Abby huffs out a laugh. “He’s a little much, I know. But he cares about you. He’s just been—thrown a little off-kilter, I think. With this whole baby thing.”

“No kidding,” Al agrees. “How are you doing, honestly?”

“I’m okay,” she says with a shrug. Her hand goes to rest on her stomach, and Al wonders if she can feel the life burgeoning inside yet. “Jake’s keeping all the tabloids and stuff away from me, so…”

Al winces. “And Phoenyx, too, I hope?”

Abby sighs. “People will say what they want to say, Al. As long as the important people know the truth, what does it matter?”

A little dumbfounded, Al stares down at her—kind, sweet Abby, nineteen and pregnant with Harry Potter’s grandchild, carrying the weight of all the bullshit the world is about to heap on her and her child. While Neville’s children had never suffered the hawk-eyed pressures of the media quite as much as Harry’s had, he’s always thought Jake and Abby get it better than most, how everyone expects you to reach something you can never be. Because he can’t kill Voldemort. Abby can’t slay a snake. And everyone keeps pushing and pushing, just waiting for them to explode.

But maybe Jake and Abby—both so intrinsically good and capable and true—never felt that itch of wanting to prove yourself turned all upside down that he and James and Lily feel. Maybe Abby doesn’t get, properly, that his reputation is the only thing he has, because the truth doesn’t matter one bit to anyone else. He learned that long ago.

“I suppose so,” he says neutrally. He can see on her face that she doesn’t believe that he believes _her_ , but she doesn’t press. “Listen, Abby—if you ever need anything, just call me, okay? Actually, call me first, not James. I can wrangle him if you need.”

Abby breathes another little laugh, and reaches up to press her lips to his cheek. “I will, Al. Thank you.”

He hugs her once, lightly because he’s a little afraid to press too hard against the baby, and then Apparates away before he can think twice of his destination.


End file.
